Article by: Chris "confire" Luong and Brett "Few" Sheffield

X3O Gaming Center has been preparing for its first event of 2009, the Winter Classic scheduled to be held from January 24-25th, 2009. The registration for the tournament started with the regular 16 teams however filled up very quickly. With the demand of the public, X3O Gaming Center made the decision to expand the tournament to a total of 24 teams. This does nothing but expand the excitement and the competition at the LAN. This tournament held at X3O is the only major North American LAN event for the 2008 gaming season for Counter-Strike 1.6. They have set the bar from the previous tournaments brought to you by Dust-Off held earlier this year (the 2008 Dust-Off Championships Final was from August 15-17th, 2008). The plan is to continue and expand from the success the Dust-Off tournaments had in 2008.

With a lot of newer, up and coming teams attending, we at X3O-Gaming.com thought that they deserved some spotlight. Normally when someone starts to watch a tournament from the comfort of their home online, they focus on the main three or four teams that they know. X3O-Gaming.com wants to make it easier for you at our Gaming Center's debut event of 2009. We are going to start giving you, the fans an overall summary on the teams that will be attending. We will be adding to this list as time goes on, so stay tuned to learn about all the teams that will be attending the first ever X3O Winter Classic.

Click HERE to view the event page of X3O's Winter Classic 2008. The team list is HERE!

We are going to kick off "Who is Who" with none other than our very own, Team X3O Counter-Strike 1.6!

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Team X3O Counter-Strike Roster (as of 12/23/08):

• Andrew “dRew” Timmerman
• Ryan “NineSpot” Bell
• David “savi0r” Park
• Jeff “hero” Mettetal
• Dan “mehLer” Mehler

NineSpot and mehLer were part of the former Team X3O and are also on the current roster. DRew, hero, savi0r in addition to NineSpot are all former members of Paragon of Virtue. They combined their strengths and are now playing as Team X3O's Counter-Strike 1.6 team. They are a very talented group of players, and are undisputedly one of the top 3 teams in all of North America. They are currently partaking in the premiere season of ESEA League and are one of four undefeated teams as the playoffs begin. The teams recently placed second at ESL Continental Finals Americas and are looking forward to upcoming events such as KODE5 USA and the ESL Global Finals (March 6-9th, 2009 in Hannover, Germany).

With the recent addition of mehLer, look forward for them to be even more of a powerhouse than their recent ESL Americas showing. They have used the addition of mehLer to motivate the team and bring them closer together. They are more focused than ever with their eye on one thing: a 1st place to prove they are America's top team.

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As always, stay tuned here at X3O-Gaming.com for the latest Team X3O news, coverage and more!