Contents
As you will already know if you have been following this series of articles over the past couple of weeks, this week has seen the Intel Extreme Masters Season X event in Katowice taking place, with 
tournaments in Counter Strike:Global Offensive and StarCraft II already well under way.
There’s already been plenty of top quality eSports betting action taking place as competitors in both of these very different eSports battle it out for their share of the $500,000 total prize money available in the event.
However from Friday 4th March through to Sunday 6th March, attention will turn to League of Legends as this $100,000 tournament featuring eight of the very best teams in the world will take centre stage over three days of high quality action.
The competition is made up of four teams that were winners and runners up of the two big Intel Extreme Masters events in San Jose and Cologne recently, with an additional four teams invited from Europe, North America, South Korea and China.
The two teams that won San Jose and Cologne were Origen and Ever, with Counter Logic Gaming and Qiao Gu Reapers earning their places finishing as runners up in the two events. The four invited teams were Fnatic, Team SoloMid, SK Telecom T1 and Royal Never Give Up.
The initial stage of the competition sees two qualifying competitions with the teams split up into two groups of four. Playing through a winners and losers bracket to discover which of the two teams from each group will make it through to the playoffs.
Group A consists of Ever, Team SoloMid, Origen and Royal Never Give Up while Group B sees SK Telecom T1, Counter Logic Gaming, Fnatic and Qiao Gu Reapers battle it out.
Two teams from each group qualify for the play offs which is then a straight knockout tournament. The semi finals are played over a Best of Three format, with the two winning teams moving through to compete in the Best of Five final.
The bookmakers Bet365 Sport have SK Telecom T1 as the 2/1 favourites to win the competition, however the legendary Korean outfit have struggled in recent times with roster changes seemingly hitting them hard. Bet365 have Royal Never Give Up as 9/4 shots alongside Qaio Gu, while the other teams are 10/1 or longer eSports betting odds to lift the title.
The action starts on Friday and progresses through until Sunday when the Semi Final and Final matches will be played. Keep your eyes peeled for all the best eSports betting on this major League of Legends event this weekend.
Dota 2 Shanghai Major enters final phase of competition
After a couple of weeks of intense competition, the Valve Dota 2 Major Championship second event, the Shanghai Major is set to come to a close this weekend with the final matches in the play off stages taking place in order to decide who will walk away with the massive $1,100,000 first prize from the $3m guaranteed prize fund.
The 16 teams competing have already played through the group stage of the event in February with the top two teams from each group entering the Upper Bracket and the bottom two teams entering the Lower Bracket.
As is customary, teams losing in the upper bracket will have a second chance in the lower bracket, though defeat in the lower bracket means you are out of the competition.
Eleven out of the 16 teams still have a chance of claiming the top prize with Team Archon, Team Spirit, Vici Gaming, CDEC Gaming and EHOME.cn the five teams that have been eliminated at the time of writing.
In the Upper Bracket, the action will commence on Friday 4th March with Team Liquid taking on MVP Phoenix and then Team Secret facing off against Evil Geniuses. The winners will contest the Upper Bracket final on Saturday with the winner of that match up claiming a place in Sunday’s Grand Final.
The Losers of the Upper Bracket Semi and subsequent Final will drop into the Lower Bracket with a second chance of qualifying. In that bracket, Alliance are the first team to make it through to the next stage, with matches forthcoming between LGD Gaming v compLexity, OG v Virtus.pro and Fnatic v Newbee coming up to see who makes it into Round 3.
Check back on your favourite eSports betting sites to see what the latest betting is on this Major event, as well as whether you can place bets on individual match winner markets (as you can with Bet365 Sport on selected matches).
Week Five Of the StarCraft II 2016 Proleague kicks off Monday
After a relatively short Week Six on Monday 29th February which saw just two matches contested (with victories for SK Telecom T1 and Jin Air Green Wings), the 2016 StarCraft II Proleague 
continues this week with a pivotal round of fixtures in the penultimate Week Five of the competition.
The four games this week will go a long way towards deciding which of the teams will make it through this initial group stage and into the playoff stages, with only four of the seven teams competing able to progress into the latter stages of the competition.
Team SK Telecom T1 lead the way with four wins out of four, with KT Rolster in second place with a 3-1 record. However competition after that for the remaining two qualification spots is intense with Afreeca Freecs, Samsung Galaxy and Jin Air Green Wings all having 2-2 records and only separated by a leg difference of one in each case.
Even CJ Entus with a 1-3 record could still squeak through if things went their way in the final two games, although MVP with a 0-4 record are out of contention.
Next Monday sees some huge clashes especially for Samsung Galaxy who will play their final two games of the Group Stages then against the teams level with then in the table, Afreeca Freecs and Jin Air Green Wings.
In other matches KT Rolster will be favourites against winless MVP, while CJ Entus could keep their hopes alive if they can inflict a shock defeat on unbeaten SK Telecom T1.
With just three matches to go after this week in Week 6, it is a crucial week in deciding which of the teams will make it through into the playoff stage.
Tune in to your favourite eSports betting site in order to get the latest odds and betting markets on this crucial week of games from Monday.
