SINGAPORE has beaten the odds to emerge champions at the Pan-Asian leg of the Championship Gaming Series (CGS).

The 10-member Singapore Swords beat South Korea and Malaysia during the preliminaries to top its group, then slayed the Wuhan Dragons from China in the semi-finals before delivering the coup de grace on Australia's Sydney Underground on Thursday.

Singapore dominated the final match with its 30-18 win.

While Singapore, as dark horses, did not have any big super stars unlike some of the other teams, it has a group of strong players who boosted the team's overall strength.

In the finals for instance, the Aussies outran the Singapore boys in Project Gotham Racing 3 but the Swords thrashed their opponents in the other games.

Mohamed Phirkan, 18, the youngest member of the team and in the entire Pan-Asian competition, routed its Aussie counterpart 7-1 in Fifa Soccer 2007 and set-up a new CGS record.

In the semi-finals, the Counter-Strike team as well as Phirkan lost to the Wuhan Dragons but the other players picked up the tab to narrowly win the game 23-20.

Aaron Aw, 27, Singapore's top Project Gotham Racing 3 player said: 'We won because we played our hearts out but more importantly because we played as a team.'

His fiance, Daphne Chow, 27, also showed her class as the best rookie in the tournament.

The team's original top choice female player of gongfu-fighting game Dead Or Alive 4 had turned down the offer to go to Kuala Lumpur, and the second choice player's passport had expired.

Ms Chow, who had boarded the bus to KL to support her fiance, Mr Aw, was asked to play instead.

The casual gamer, who had never played competitively and last took part in the 2005 game for fun, was given a three-hour crash course by team mate Wilson Chia, 25, and practised with the others.

In the end she won three of her four matches, including outclassing her opponent 5-1 in the final match.

After the competition, CGS also announced that Mr Steven Yong, the director of its Asia operations, who acted as interim manager, was appointed full time as team manager.

CGS is global media giant News Corp's - and the world's - first worldwide professional gaming league, which has US$5 million in prize money and contracts at stake.

The top four teams at the Pan-Asian leg - Singapore, Australia, China and Korea were drafted into the professional league on Sunday. Each player gets an annual US$30,000 (S$44,000) contract plus winnings from tournaments.

They can also hold their day jobs or continue their studies so long as they can meet their commitments as cyber athletes.

The CGS competition will be aired on News Corp's channels including DirectTV, Sky and Star.

In Singapore, ESPN Star Sports has started broadcasting the CGS games at 6 pm every Monday until the World Championships which will be held in Los Angeles in December.