posted Sep 12th, 2009 - Things have changed a little bit at the ESL Championship 2009. Satori, the AAA Class leader, allowed 4XTT from Belgium already yesterday to match the score for Round 7. The 19-pointer in Round 8 was three points ahead of the field again, and nothing seems to be in Satori's way any longer to get past the 21-point average level after ten rounds.

Italy's former Ex3mo 8-way bronze medalist Luca Stanga informed the NSL News that Spinapsi is not competing for the United Kingdom, as the ESL leaderboard indicated earlier.

Spinapsi is an Italian team, and the NSL News will hopefully follow up with the exact lineup very soon. The team name sounds obviously very much like a combination of the Spin Team and Sinapsi.

This change has a smaller impact on the ESL Spirit calculations that yesterday's NSL News story explained briefly. Spinapsi is not collecting points for the UK delegation, and this may also count for Voodoo, which is actually a lineup from South Africa.

This would bring two other UK teams into the ESL game, and things would look a little bit better for the delegation from the Netherlands. Ignition, Creeps and Meo are still scoring very well as the respective leaders in their competition classes, and their ESL points would now bring the Dutch delegation much closer to the UK teams.

Satori (175), Phobia (112), Rookie Class team Gr4vity (102), plus either Fend 4 Yourself (100) or Nuvision (100) would be UK's pointgetters after Round 8, without Spinapsi and Voodoo. UK's total would be 489 points after eight rounds.

The four Dutch teams collecting points for the Netherlands would be much closer compared to yesterday's calculation with Spinapsi and Voodoo competing for the United Kingdom. Rookie Class leader Meo (118), A Class team Creeps (97) and AA Class teams Ignition (91) and Empat Laki Laki (81), have collected a total of 387 points after eight rounds.

Yesterday's difference after Round 6 was 139 points (429 - 290). The ESL Spirit calculation without Spinapsi and Voodoo has the UK and Dutch delegations much closer together with a difference of 102 points. However, UK's AAA Class are still collecting significantly more points than the Dutch leaders in the other competition classes. The ESL Spirit will most likely stay in the United Kingdom, with or without Spinapsi and Voodoo.

Round 9 is almost complete, and Round 10 is already in progress.