This weekend will see the first season of the 2020 Hearthstone Masters Tour series of tournaments which is part of the larger, GrandMasters 2020 tournament. The competition is unique to a number of other esports competitions that are happening at the current moment in time for two reasons.
Firstly, it is a tournament for the game, Hearthstone from Blizzard. These tournaments are generally not as prominent as LoL or DOTA 2 tournaments, which are also occurring across the world in the first few months in 2020. Secondly, the Hearthstone 2020 Masters Tour Arlington is a single-player event and so there will be individuals participating as opposed to the franchise’s that you usually see in esports. In regards to this, the number of participants is also much larger than usual and with a fairly unique format. As such, if you are looking for an event in the esports calendar that is a little bit different from what you are used to, then this could be exactly what you are looking for.
One thing that is similar to other esports tournaments though is that big-money is up for grabs – with a $250,000 USD prize pool on offer. $100,000 of which will go directly to the winner. With all the players battling it out for that top prize excitement is guaranteed. Let’s take at the 2020 Masters Tour Arlington look in more detail.
How to qualify for the main event
Individuals participating in the 2020 Hearthstone Masters Tour have done so via participating in the qualifiers that took place between October and November last year. However, there was more than one way by which players could actually earn themselves a place at this weekend’s event and many of the participants will have got there via a number of different routes. You had to either:
- Be a Hearthstone Grandmaster.
- Have participated in and placed at least a 7-2 result at the Masters Tour Bucharest.
- Have on an on-site Masters Qualifier at these same Bucharest Masters Tour event.
- Placed within a top 16 Legend on the in-game Ladder during the qualification period
- Finished in the Top 8 of a Masters Qualifier 5 times or more.
- Or won an online Masters Qualifier During the qualification.
These aforementioned qualifiers consisted of over 100 separate individual qualifiers from which there was one winner and one runner-up for each. The higher you placed within them, as shown above, meant the higher chance you had of getting into the final event. These all took place in Bo3, single eliminations format in conquest mode.
The perks of finishing higher up also resulted in earning more packs. There were between 20-1 packs available to those who qualified. Those in first and second place won 20 packs each, while those in 3rd and 4th won 15 and those between 5-8th won 10. Everyone else won between 10 packs to 1 pack and it was possible to accumulate these over the total qualification process.
Tournament format
There are two rounds of the tournament that participants must compete in and come out on top of in order to be the champion. There are two constants in the tournament though and that is the fact that all matches are Bo5 and that they will all take place in the Conquest mode of the game.
The 2020 Hearthstone Masters Tour tournament itself though will begin with two days of Swiss Rounds. On Day 1, there will 5 rounds, where players will battle against one another in randomly allocated match-ups. The players who rack up more than 3 wins over the course of Day 1 will move on to Day 2, during which there will 4 rounds. The Top 8 players after these rounds will advance to Playoffs.
In the playoffs, the tournament will take a more conventional approach as the players proceed through a quarter-finals stage, a semi-finals stage and final. These will be conducted with a single-elimination format in place. The winner of the final will, of course, then be crowned champion and take home that $100,000 grand prize. Smaller prizes will then be distributed to the players in 2nd, 3rd and 4th place.
List of Players
With nearly 200 players participating in the final match-up, it would not make sense to list all those who are attending here and now. What we can say now is that there are representatives who have qualified from all the main esports regions, such as the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, with some from unknown regions too. Alongside the qualifying players, there have also been a large number of invited players from all three regions mentioned, as well as China. Many of these players belong to established esports teams, but not all.
Schedule list
The tournament will take place in its entirety from 2020-01-31 until 2020-02-02.
Streaming platform list
Those wishing to view the action can do so via streams on Twitch and on Youtube with there likely also being a large number of other third-party Hearthstone dedicated steaming sites out there too. There may also be some online sportsbooks who will also show some of the action. However, the tournament is massive so don’t expect to find every match and even if you could, there is no way you could watch them all. At these online locations mentioned though, it should be possible to watch the playoffs in their entirety.
Streaming on esportsguide.com
One of the best sites for watching the game. The perfect guide for users that are new or already into esports. Providing an extensive list of the biggest esports together with streams for each esports match live today or upcoming matches.
Predictions
With such a large number of participants, it is incredibly hard to choose one outright winner. Of course, the invited players were invited based on their skill, so you would expect one of those to be in with a significant chance. However, with so many qualifying players, including many complete enigmas, it is incredibly hard to choose a favorite at this early point and anything could really happen this weekend. All we know is that there are sure to be many upsets and a lot of exciting matches will happen.
