It’s that time of the year – the HCT Winter Championship is about to kick off

In just another week, the Hearthstone Winter Championship is kicking off – on the 28th of February, 16 of the world’s best players are going to be representing their regions! Asia-Pacific, China, Europe and the Americas are up against each other in the hopes of nabbing themselves one of the four remaining spots at the HCT World Championship this April… and, of course, also the title of HCT Winter Champion!

The winner is going to get 30 points and a prize of $50k – pretty impressive winnings! The runner-up will still take home 25 points and $40k, while the third and fourth placed players will get 20 points and $25k each. Places 5-8 each receive 15 points and $12.5k, while the places 8-16 will receive 12 points and $7.5k each!

Find out more about: Hearthstone Betting

Like in other Championships, you can go online to select your favourite of the 16 competitors in order to snatch up some Hearthstone card packs, based on how well they play! Don’t miss out on some free cards, simply go to the Hearthstone website and sign up there! Be aware though that you can’t change your pick once you’ve chosen, so do so carefully!

It's time to Choose Your Champion for #HCT Winter! 👑 Pick your favorite player, follow them through the action, and earn packs as they march toward tournament victory! 🧐 Get started here: https://t.co/WHUA8waSui pic.twitter.com/Ozsdt7A346 — Hearthstone Esports (@HSesports) February 20, 2019

Whether your chosen player does well or not though, you’ll definitely get a reward for participating – you’ll receive one card pack from Rastakhan’s Rumble just for signing up! Additionally, you’ll be getting one additional pack every time your champion advances, be it to the quarterfinals, semi-finals or finals.

The 16 champions you can select from are from all over the world – four players (LFcaimiao, GoeLionKing, SNJing and LFYueying) are from China, three more (bloodyface, Ike and noblord) are from the US, and the rest from other countries including Turkey, Canada, Korea, Germany and Japan.

If your champion makes it into the finals, you could earn four total packs, including the one you get for participating. You’ll be getting your accumulated packs all in one go one week after the championship concludes. As for signing up and voting, it ends just before the event itself begins – on February 28th, at 9.30 am PST.

A few hours later, the actual events begin – Day 1’s broadcasts begin on February 28th, at 5.30 pm CET and run until March 1st 3 am CET. Day 2, 3 and the final championship day on day 4 follow the same schedule of 5.30 pm CET until 3 am CET the next day.

Be sure to sign up quickly to avoid missing the deadline! If you want to participate in a guessing game on Twitter, Blizzard set up #HCTWinter for people to debate and predict who’s going to make it big at this event. If, rather than that, you want to watch it all go down, the event will of course be live-streamed on the Twitch Channel of Hearthstone.