Grand Hotshots event offers prize pool for 16 rising teams

A new tournament called Grand Hotshots has been announced and it will offer up a €15,000 prize pool for participating teams. The event will take place in November and 16 rising teams will have the chance to fight for first place. The new Grand Hotshots event is hosted by QuickFire, who are also running another tournament in November with teams like BIG and Virtus.Pro. The Grand Hotshots event is different because it’ll be giving smaller teams s chance to make a name for themselves.

Full Grand Hotshots Tournament Details

Starting on November 5 and ending November 8, 16 teams will enter but only the top 4 will walk away with a portion of the €15,000 prize pool. To begin with, all 16 teams will be split into four groups of four. So far, 15 teams have been revealed. The final team will be unveiled after the final qualifying event has finished.

If you’re a diehard CS:GO fan, you’ll undoubtedly recognize a large selection of the participating teams. There’s a wide variety of talent from all across the Europe and the CIS regions. The full list has been provided below.

3DMAX

ForZe

pro100

Movistar Riders

Valiance

Tricked

Red Reserve

Windigo

Epsilon

Codewise Unicorns

Windigo Academy

PACT

ALTERNATE aTTaX

Markskalk

Jordan’s Money Crew

The first place team will win €7,500 whilst second place will take €3,500 and 3-4 will both take €2,000.

There are countless CS:GO tournaments every single year, but the majority of them only provide invitations to the best teams. The qualifiers for many events offer lower tier teams the chance to fight their way into big international tournaments, but many teams don’t have what it takes to go up against the top teams. As a result, many teams without backing from financially supported organizations struggle to make a name for themselves. This makes it very hard for rising talent to build teams and earn a living through playing Counter Strike competitively.

Events like Grand Hotshots give lower tier teams the chance to compete and earn money for their hard work.

The prize pool is admittedly far smaller than many large international events, but this means the top tier teams will not be signing up, which is great news for the other attending teams.

I personally think we need to see more events like this throughout Europe and the rest of the world to help foster a stronger competitive scene to help those interested in playing the game professionally. The Minor tournaments from Valve obviously help to bring new talent into the spotlight, but besides that, there are very few opportunities that actually offer decent prize pools. For many, the cost of just showing up can be more than the money each player has the potential to walk home with.

If you want to help support the growth of lower tier Counter Strike, you should tune into the tournament as it happens live over at the Quickfire Twitch channel.

Hopefully we’ll get a full match schedule closer to the start of the event.