Posted Jan 29, 2013 by D-eSports.com in News

ESET UK Masters Season 1 Announcement!

Following the great success at the previous i-Series (i47), ESET have announced an entire new season culminating in a grand finals held at Insomnia 48

ESET have also announced that the new Starcraft 2 expansion; Heart of the Swarm will be used in the new season. ESET have suggested that the positives of hosting a HotS tournament outweigh the negatives. This new season will play host to a brand new format. ESET have made changes to the way players will qualify for the UK Masters tournament. This method is to make sure that a good mix of all players are included in the new tournament. The changes that have been made are as follows:

Player slots increased from 16 to 24 slots
Previous event finalists; Bling and KrasS (insomnia 47) have been invited back.
6 players from online invitational qualifiers will be invited
Top 4 players from the open qualifiers
Top 12 players from the Insomnia 48 BYOC tournament

The two open qualifiers will contain up to 128 players and will be on two separate days:

Open Qualifier #1 – 7th February – up to 128 players
Open Qualifier #2 – 21st January – up to 128 players

There will also be two online invitational qualifiers featuring a featuring the top tier players from around the world:

Invitational Qualifier #1 –30th January Ro16 and Ro8, 31st January Ro4 and 3rd place
Invitational Qualifier #2 – 13th Feburary Ro16 and Ro8, 14th February Ro4 and 3rd place

Players announced for the first invitational are:

Invitational Qualifier #1

Protoss	Terran	Zerg
BabyKnight	Naama	Tefel
NightEnD	PoYo	Miniraiser
HasuObs		DIMAGA
Harstem		Ziktomini
White-Ra		JonnyREcco
ABomB		Minato
Ourk		HappyZerg

ESET have doubled the prize money since then and has re-distributed the prize pool to accommodate the 16 to 24 player slot change. ESET have also released the prize distribution for the ESET UK Masters Season 1 Grand Finals which are being held at Insomnia 48, below is the prize distribution: