The groups for EM4 Dubai have been announced and after the German player Marcel 'k1llsen' Paul, runner-up at ESWC 2008 Grand Finals, dropped out of the tournament ESL has been struggling to get a replacement. They have now announced K1llsen's replacement, Spammah a local talent from Dubai who has no known achievements within the Quake scene.

Starting Saturday 17th all the matches will be streamed for free by ESL-TV. The schedule can be found here. Each match in the group stage will be played best of three with the top two players in each group moving on to single elimination playoffs that will be played best of five. There might be small changes to the groups, final decision will be announced on Wednesday.

SK's own Rapha has been placed in what can only be called a killer group as he will be facing the legendary player Anton 'Cooller' Singov, who has multiple titles in both Quake 3 and Quake 4 but has lately not been doing as well as expected. In the same group is Magnus 'fox' Olsson, a player that recently placed 5-6th at Quakecon and has been consistently doing good. Last is Pierre-Emeric 'link1n' Portier, while considered a TDM and CTF player, responsible for fnatic's success at Quakecon, he has also proved numerous times that he can beat the best duelers.

Group A:
Shane 'rapha' Hendrixson
Magnus 'fox' Olsson
Anton 'Cooller' Singov
Pierre-Emeric 'link1n' Portier

Group B:
Richard 'noctis' Gansterer
Alessandro 'stermy' Avallone
Pelle 'Fazz' Söderman
Felix 'smoke' Pafel

Group C:
Sebastian 'Spart1e1' Siira
Tim 'DaHanG' Fogarty
Zhibo 'Fan Zhibo' Fan
Spammah

Group D:
Alexei 'Cypher' Yanushevsky
Kevin 'Strenx' Baeza
Chance 'Chance' Lacina
Michael 'mAdix' Hindersson

Source: Esreality