Article by: Chris "confire" Luong, Brett "Few" Sheffield and Andrew "Conflict" Nguyen

This is the fourth part of X3O's Winter Classic 2008's "Who is Who", if you missed the earlier editions, you can check them out below:

Part 1 (X3O)
Part 2 (Gravitas, LOOK, deadendtheory)
Part 3 (FD, Drift, Southern Aggression)

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!

makeSHIFT - formerly known as Enhanced (as of 1/9/08):

• buskey
• synikaL
• hurr1cane
• frako
• niCkf

Enhanced is a current CEVO-Main team that will be competing in the upcoming CEVO-Professional Placement Tournament. The Winter Classic will be the team's LAN debut. The team name has been around for about two years, but this time it has a few new faces. About two weeks ago frako decided to put together a team for the Winter Classic, and he did it the best way he could. He brought in buskey, synikaL, and hurr1cane, all who have played in CEVO-Professional. Look for this team to put together some W's and dart out of group play. With the right teamwork and chemistry, they have the potential to make it pretty far in this tournament.

Pancakes Are Yummy (as of 12/30/08):

• ksm
• slain
• amz
• mkz
• kLiptik

Pancakes Are Yummy (PAY) is a former CAL-Premier team with all players that have attended LAN tournaments prior to the Winter Classic. However, this team is quite different from the old CAL-P team seen in action before. Ksm, mkz, and amz has been playing together for quite awhile now being in the old pay team. The new player in this team is Kliptik who just joined their new lineup in preparation for the Winter Classic. They also added slain from snailtrail, a team that is currently playing in ESEA League as well as CAL; he will be a ringer for this event. Although they have plenty of previous experience under their belt, they lack the chemistry of a core group of players, which makes it hard to tell how well they will do.

Initial (as of 1/15/09):

• Dan "dsingh" Singh
• Alan "rodman" Rodriguez
• Mike "mkpro" Rogers
• Vince "fr3ak" DeCarlo
• Nick "minifr3ak" DeCarlo

Initial has had many years of successful seasons with many different rosters under the team's general manager, Michael "assault" Mohanlall. And now they are back in action and arguably with the best roster Initial has had thus far. The members have played together for years at the highest levels under many teams including 50 Calibre, Interstate 95, and our very own X3O team. Rodriguez (rodman) is a founding member of the original team. The team has extensive experience playing against top organizations in CEVO-Professional, CAL-Invite, and other major LAN events. Look forward in seeing this team go far into the Winter Classic for they expect nothing less than a top 3 placing. Rogers (mkpro) was a part of Paragon of Virtue prior to the team's joining of Team X3O.

*Special thanks goes out to Michael Mohanlall for helping write this piece.

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