▲ Hearthstone's first Master Tour stop of 2019 will take place in Las Vegas this weekend.

The 2019 competitive Hearthstone year kicks off starting today in Las Vegas with the Master Tour stop, featuring a $500,000 prize pool, half of which was funded by the game's community. 350 competitors, who qualified from around the world, will take place in a three-day event that will award first place a cool $50,000.

Day 1 of play will feature seven rounds of Swiss tournament action with those who accumulate four or more wins moving on to Saturday's day of play. From there, competitors will play five additional rounds of Swiss matches and only the top 8 will advance to Sunday. All matches will take place in the newly created Specialist Format and be a best-of-three, except for the finals, which is a best-of-five.

▲ Special Format allows players to bring one class and numerous sideboard options.

Recently, Hearthstone featured a "Masters Bundle" inside the game's shop which allowed players who purchased the goodies to contribute towards the Tour Stop's prize pool, up to an additional $250,000. That number was reached fair quickly and, due to the success, could act as a reoccurring crowd-funding feature for events in the future.

The event itself, which is cast by TJ “Azumo” Sanders, Dan “Frodan” Chou, Nathan “Admirable” Zamora, and Darroch “Darroch” Brown, will kick off at 9 a.m PDT starting on Friday, July 14. Viewers at home can watch the tournament through one of five Hearthstone live streams.

As an added perk for tuning in, viewers will receive a three Rise of Shadows card pack for consuming a total of three hours worth of content throughout the weekend to those who have linked their Twitch account to their Battlenet one. An additional pack will be credited for watching six hours in total. Finally, every hour 1,500 eligible viewers will be rewarded with a Classic pack.

Viewers can watch the event through Hearthstone's main Twitch account here.

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