Electronic Sports League

The Electronic Sports League (or ESL) is a computer gaming league that hosts ladders, tournaments and awards based around online games. AssaultCube is one such game in this league. Although ESL was popular at first, the majority of players have given up in participating. There is still some action, mainly in the Deathmatch Ladder.

History
The idea to get in contact with the ESL firstly appeared within the discussion about creating an official ladder in the summer of 2007. Thus a working ladder system has been relased a few months later, this idea came into oblivion for the moment. Round about a year later new efforts to get in contact with the ESL have been initiated. To this moment it was not to expect that this idea would become successfully in the community, because previous attempts to place new community events have been failed in the past. On October 8, 2008, the community manager Antony Seedhouse - nickname TheRogue - has given the AssaultCube community a trial run, and decided to start off with a 16 team single elimination cup, which consisted of following rules:


 * All players has to be registered at ESL
 * The leader of team has to create a team account and to invite his members to join the newly created team
 * The team has to sign up to the cup

The so called "ESL CTF Opening Cup" was the first event related to AssaultCube in this league and took place on November 2, 2008. After its success several other tournaments has been played.

Tournaments
These results are just the end results of the games at the time, not taking into account any cheaters caught since the final, etc.

Criticism and incidents
The ESL-AC has gained a lot of criticism from prevalent members of the community. Some members have gone as far as to request the removal of AC from the ESL. Some of the reasons are described here.

Cheating
Throughout 2009, the ESL became a mainstream place for people to play their 1on1 ladder games and also the only place where clans could compete. However, it was later found that ESL was a big magnet to cheaters, and some known players were later found to have cheated in ESL matches. This leads to a lot of controversy towards the ESL, as it seems to allow cheating players to stay in it's league.


 * NR was discovered to have cheated in one of their games but was not removed from the league.


 * 3H clan was discovered to have cheated throughout their games and were not removed from the league. Myster was a leader of that team in the ESL.


 * Velo found out to have been wall-hacking whilst in ANGRA and playing ESL games, Velo was disqualified from the 1-on-1-ladder. He admitted his guilt a month after he was reported by Drakas.


 * Myster, a member of the Owning Noobs Everywhere team, also known as R4T0 and Trond (as of the 3H team in the ESL). He was originally reported by Brahma for using cheats. This created a large controversy. He has not admitted his guilt even after very convincing evidence.


 * AnthraX, accused of wallhacking by Brahma was defended by Davitomon and the case was dropped. ESL admins didn't have the time to think about it although AnthraX competed for ANGRA who have had another cheater already.


 * Seagal, a member of the oNe team, was controversially accused by Brahma of using weapon-hacks after playing quite a few ESL games.


 * FaeL was discovered to have cheated but wasn't removed from the league.


 * Wolf was accused in February 2010 for using cheats and has not been considered by the ESL admins in the TDM cup, which the oNe team, the one that Wolf played for, won.

Fair-play
ANGRA have repeatedly broken rules throughout the CTF summer league and were not, albeit the big requests, awarded any penalty points for their actions, such as playing with a cheating player, whose cheating was not recognised by the ESL-AC admins and breaking other various rules of conduct.

The 2009 Summer league
This league is highly criticised both for the lack of co-operation and the fact that it finished in winter. Half of the final bracket of eight teams had some form of cheaters and unfair play. The cup ended out in this fashion:
 * 1) 1 A&D: renounced their title after finding out Davitomon's play
 * 2) 2 ANGRA: at least 1 known cheater by the time it was over (Velo). AnthraX and Panico were proven to have cheated.
 * 3) 3 Woop
 * 4) 4 BRC (aka. 3H): at least 1 known cheater (Myster)

Lack of cooperation of ESL admins
Davitomon, who was an ESL admin previously began to use cheats in October 2009 that enhanced his performance. He was found out only in December 2009 in a game against the team of Legendary-cubers. He denied any claims to cheating, until proof from another of his clan members gave proof of further cheating in clan training and other matches. He was removed from Armed and Dangerous and reported to the blacklist.

Aerkefiende, who is an ESL-AC administrator from the start has refused to acknowledge any of the evidence of cheating provided by the members of community, such as Drakas and Brahma. tipper has criticised the ESL for lack of response when the trouble started. Generally, the ESL-AC is seen to be very disconnected from the community because of this criticism and undermines the game.

=References=

=External links=
 * AssaulCube Forum in the ESL
 * ESL: Weekend Cups