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The Cyberathlete Amateur League (or CAL) is a large online electronic sports league operated by the Cyberathlete Professional League that allows players to test their skills against each other in a variety of multiplayer games, usually in the first-person shooter category. Although CAL is a U.S.-based organization, it is slowly expanding into a global level offering competitions for European players at some games.
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History
The Cyberathlete Amateur League was created when a very popular online league, Frank Nuccio's Domain of Games, was acquired by the Cyberathlete Professional League, created by Angel Munoz. Since then CAL has grown to a user-base of well into the hundreds of thousands and continues to see growth every year. The league was officially launched online as the Cyberathlete Amateur League in 2001.
Structure
CAL's structure is composed of leagues which make up the whole, each league is further sub-divided into smaller sections called 'divisions' each division of a game is geared towards a specific set of team and individual player skills. The most popular CAL game by far is Counter-Strike, a fast-paced tactical first-person shooter based on the Half-Life engine developed by Valve Software. Other popular games include America's Army, Day of Defeat (another Half-Life mod), Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, StarCraft, and Warcraft III. Within each game's tier there are different divisions which are indicative of teams ability to compete at higher levels of play. Counter-Strike, the largest tier, has five internal leagues that teams must work their way up, with a few exceptions. They are CAL-Open (CAL-O), the only division with open registrations; CAL-Intermediate (CAL-IM), which includes the winners of the previous Open season or if you have proof of being worthy of CAL-IM; CAL-Main (CAL-M), which includes the winners of the previous Intermediate or top Open season; CAL-Premier (CAL-P), which has winners from Main, as well as high-ranking Main teams from previous seasons; and finally, CAL-Invite (CAL-I), the highest rung that has only the best teams that have proven themselves over many seasons. Each game league follow this naming system but not all games have a large enough following to warrant every tier, new games usually start with everyone in an open division and take the best teams to first form main and invite divisions. Each league within each game has three conferences, Atlantic, Central, and Pacific (based on the geographic location of the team), and these conferences are further broken down into different divisions that are randomly chosen at the beginning of each season. Each division has a head, who is a volunteer that oversees the overall operation of the division. Each league also has a team of administrators, capped by one lead head for all of the game. There is also a team of administrators who work primarily on cheating disputes made from teams and an anti-cheat team to prevent hackers/cheaters in the league. While CAL has been only available to America since its creation, CAL currently has European leagues for War§ow, America's Army, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, Day of Defeat: Source, Counter-Strike: Source and many other popular games.
CAL and cheaters
As with all online leagues, occasional cheaters may be encountered in CAL. CAL, as with other leagues, relies on a combination of human judgment as well as supplementary tools to combat the spread of cheating and other rule violations. Newly implemented was the use of the Cal Anti-Cheat System (ACS) in 2007. Currently ACS is required for all Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source league matches, and will eventually be released for league wide use. Players are required to run the ACS program while competing in CAL matches. The ACS checks for the use of illegal configuration files (for example bunny hop scripts) and also for illegal client variables (CVARs).
CAL and CPL
CAL is the free and amateur division of the Cyberathlete Professional League. The CAL competitions are used by the CPL as a supporter for the seeding, as a qualifier for the main CPL events and as a way to maintain year-long competitions for the fans.
See also
External links
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| Professional | World Cyber Games · Electronic Sports World Cup · Championship Gaming Series · Major League Gaming · Cyberathlete Professional League · XLEAGUE.TV · World e-Sports Games · Starleague (Ongamenet) |
| Amateur | Electronic Sports League · Twin Galaxies · Cyberathlete Amateur League · CyberEvolution |
