The tournament included the winners from previous Pro Player Challenges and a few other guests, namely Olly Murs. This is a quite brilliant video I’m sure you’ll agree which is rounded off nicely with an epic penalty shootout in the final.

And the winner is…

Click here to view the embedded video.

“The EA SPORTS FIFA 12 Challenge is a global online tournament that lets you prove your skills on the virtual pitch to win a share of $400,000 in cash.  On now, the tournament will open with two online qualifying stages using the exclusive Series Tournament model on VirginGaming.com. Win 6 consecutive matches without a loss and you’ll earn a seat to play in the live finals, a 3-day gaming event taking place in New York City in April, 2012″

That’s quite a prize I’m sure you’ll agree. For more details of the PS3 FIFA 12 Challenge Series including terms and conditions, how it works, the tournament schedule and FAQ’s get yourself over to VirginGaming.com who have all the details.

With this competition and the FIWC 2012 which launched recently, surely Xbox 360 owners out there are feeling a bit unloved right now?

The prize on offer once again is a cool 20,000 USD and the much coveted VIP trip to the Ballon d’Or Gala where you’ll be able to rub shoulders with the greatest footballers on the planet.

There will be 6 online FIWC 2012 qualifiers in total and here are the details:

Online Season 1: 1-31 December, 2011

Online Season 2: 5 January-25 January, 2012

Online Season 3: 1 February-25 February, 2012

Online Season 4: 1 March-25 March, 2012

Online Season 5: 1 April-25 April, 2012

Online Season 6: 1 May-18 May, 2012

As well as six oppotunities in the online arena there will also be eleven live qualifiers over the next few months and we’ll bring you details of these as and when we get them. For more information, head over to the FIWC 2012 website.

So FSB fans, are any of you going to try and win the top prize on the pro FIFA gaming scene?

And the winner is…

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re expecting more of these Pro Player Tournaments over the coming weeks and we’ll of course keep you updated.

It was massive, much bigger than I expected. Spread over various rooms were Gears 3, Black Ops, Street Fighter and FIFA events, as well as some old school Halo LAN play, complete with 14″ SD tvs. Beautiful Stuff.

The event is standard eSports fare, complete with banter. Everything is extremely professional and well looked after, with each game having dedicated admins to resolve any disputes. For the FIFA tournament, the format was 6 minutes, World Class, No custom sliders or formations, best of three.

The most interesting to me was one of the tactics being employed. Although no customisation was allowed, quite a few of the players, were switching to a deep 4-5-1 immediately after taking the lead. Not cheating I guess, but I was pretty amazed to see people doing that in a live tournament. I’d expect it online, but not face to face. From talking to a couple of the players, it was a sticking point.

You can see how the results panned out here, with Ty Walton from Team Dignitas pushing past the other 31 players to be crowned champion, and view the photos from the event taken by Dave Witts on Facebook.

The next event will be i44 which runs from Friday the 18th to Monday the 21st of November at The Telford International Centre, full details of which can be found over at Sweetpatch.tv.

Big thanks to Dave for looking after me, always a pleasure to see you fella.

Checkout a full gallery of the FIFA 12 tournament on the Official Aston Villa website.

Interestingly on the EA SPORTS Football article it states “Stay tuned to easportsfootball.com for more exciting news on future club player tournaments!”

Interesting……

It’s broken its own World Record by some margin too. FIWC 2010 waltzed in to the record books with an eye watering 775,000 participants, which has now been easily topped by FIWC 2011′s astonishing 869,543 entrants, wow. With this years pre-registering for the FIWC 2011 at an all time high it was “rumoured” very early on that the tournament would go on to break its own World Record, but still a fantastic achievement none the less.

“The Guinness World Records – Gamer’s Edition is packed with extraordinary feats from the field of computer gaming, and we’re proud to count the FIWC among them.”

This does however leave us with two very big questions. Can the FIWC break the one million barrier next year? And when will an equivalent competition come to the Xbox360?

A special mention goes to UK entrant Adam Winster who put in a brilliant performance to come 4th although the general feeling from LA was that he deserved to win his semi-final comfortably and in his own words, “that’s FIFA”. For full details of how it went down check out @AsimTanvirs Twitter timeline which details the exciting events as they unfolded.

Also, check out the official article on the FIWC website where there’s a gallery with pretty girls in too.

We”ll be bringing you an exclusive FIFA Soccer Blog FIWC Final gallery over the weekend.

As most of you will know Adam Winster was victorious beating Rob Brewster 2-1 in the UK Grand Final. The good news though is that both will be jetting off to L.A to represent the UK FIFA community as Rob had already won another FIWC qualifying event. Good luck to both lads in the world finals and let’s bring the prize home this year.

To see the UK FIWC Live Coverage GO HERE

And also huge thanks to SweetpatchTV for digging this one out, top stuff.