As we all know, the PGL Krakow major is coming up soon and teams from around the world will be battling it out for places in the Minors in order to earn their shot at glory in Poland.

Valve, however, have thrown a spanner in the works, sympathetic with the state of UK Counter Strike, they have offered one team a chance to compete in Poland by partnering with us for the UK Minor.

The UK Minor will see sixty-four teams compete at a BYOC LAN tournament hosted by our friends at Multiplay in a dark hall in the middle of the historic National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. We can also reveal the schedule for this historic event in the UK Counter Strike scene:

Day 1 –

09:59 – Groups hastily seeded and created by tournament admins last minute

10:00 – Groups officially start, 16 groups of 4 in a Round Robin format

11:30 – Most of the players are located outside smoking and are ushered back into the hall so they can actually start their games

12:05 – Allotted time for default hunters to complain about ambiguous details to try and get a free win under their belt

12:30 – First group games start

Day 2 –

04:00 – Group games finish

09:30 – All doors are locked to prevent any more delays for smoke breaks. Any teams still outside are defaulted

10:00 – Bo3 16 Team Double elimination bracket starts

23:59 – Quarter finals

Day 3 –

11:00 – Semi Finals and Consolidation Final

15:00 – Grand Finals

There’s also a significant prize pool for this event, a stunning £5,000 will be split across the top 4 teams with £2500 going to first place.

A VALVe Spokesperson had a few things to say about this first-time event.

We’ve been watching the UK Counter Strike scene change and grow since the early 1.6 days, We’ve been inspired by teams like Mousesports UK, Birmingham Salvo, Reason Gaming, London Mint and many more. While the scene has dropped off significantly since the release of Global Offensive, we believe that British Esports can come back fighting which is why we chose to run this Minor. We can’t wait to see the mix team that wins this and then splits just before the Main Qualifier.

In this interview, he goes on to say that he was so impressed with our flawless execution of UKGT, that they wanted us to run and produce the tournament during i60. In response to this, Jon Kelly from Multiplay, a man who has dedicated most of his adult life to putting up with admining BYOC tournaments said:

I mean, it’s kinda bulls**t…Why assume teams that have paid top dollar to fight through hoards of Minecraft kiddies and cosplayers actually want to play in a serious competiton? Everyone knows its not what the Insomnia Series is about. The scheduling is way off too…I mean, 35 minutes between finding them smoking and the first defaults being attemtped? Are you crazy? That should be at least another two hours. And as for this “flawless exectuion” of UKGT, let me tell you………..

Bizarrely, all recording equipment stopped working at this stage and the rest of the interview was lost.

We hope you’ll join us in Birmingham for this exciting event in 2 weeks time. We’ll provide more details as the time closes in.