insomnia58: The Viewer’s Guide

The time is nearly upon us, many gamers would have set off yesterday in anticipation for an exciting weekend ahead of them. Some of the CS:GO community will be believing they can be the “next big thing” whilst others will be tired of turning up to another iSeries, going through all the delays that usually happen, and wondering why they bothered. It’s a great mix of people at an event like this and one we are incredibly excited to cover this weekend.

From our own team, Adam “Blanks” Heath will be leading a crew of merry men around the floor to write up notes on some of the bigger clashes this weekend, they will be scurrying around doing some interviews where they can, and of course, we have a set of pictures that will be being snapped throughout the weekend. Meanwhile, I’ll be holding the fort down back home and watching from a distance to help support the event team as much as possible. It’s a difficult thing to do usually because I get the itch to be there but remember I can’t be, however I can still take notes from an outside perspective, and be a watchful eye on things. (Let’s just hope GOTVs will be up for us to use *cough* Multiplay *cough*)

With UK Masters which has been going on for the last couple of months, there will be two UK teams who get to skip the group stages and focus on winning the biggest title to date from Multiplay. Those two teams being CAZ eSports and fm-eSports who will be heading onto a stage at around 6pm on Friday to play in a Best of Three Final. Meanwhile, we do have a small European contingent of teams, with Romanian outfit XPC.gg who recently won one of the biggest LANs in Romania heading to see if they can claim some scalps of the UK Scene. From Italy, we also see the return of Guglielmo “GUGLi” Carraro who has a fantastic history of coming to iSeries and playing well.  He will be with the team True eSport. We will shortly have a preview on some of these teams in the next few hours.

There are also some more notable named teams in attendance, Team Infused will be there with a different set of names under their banner, whilst runners up from epic.EIGHTEEN, will also be there as The Last Resort. Team CeX will be in attendance with a slightly altered lineup since we saw them in the ESL UK Premiership. Also a mix team named “Winners” will be there with Ben “r0m” Smith, and Fabien “kioShiMa” Fiey in that lineup. The other most notable team in attendance being Rize Gaming led up by Jonathan “Sheekey” Sheekey. We’ve said it before for the last few iSeries, but this LAN seems so much more wide open to anybody winning this event.

For the next three days, be ready for some pulsating action, some drama, pure controversy, delays and the fact that anything and everything will happen at insomnia58, it will be the ride of your life. Here are just some of the teams in attendance this weekend:

The Teams

The Heavyweights

• CAZ eSports – jakem, robiin, tsack, Kryptix, Boaster
• fm-eSports – Whindanski, socN, nEiLZHiNHo, hudzG, CINDER
• Team Infused – Puls3, Weber, conoR, Aaron, MightyMax
• Winners – Kioshima, r0m, smooya, Brodyyyy, onscreenlol
• XPC.gg – WHiTE, Seminte, xellow, COSMEEEN, starkiller
• Rize Gaming.UK – SHEEKEY, shaney, Peggyyyyy, JT, Immi
• TLR.eSports – SpeedyG, ALIG, paynt, hoodlum, dUdLeY
• CeX – Resu, Chronic, EB, AndrewIsGod, Rob4

The Underdogs

• Team uFrag – Adamxoxo, Esio, HypeIzBack, Jak3y, Snodz
• True eSport – GUGLi, Goalie, SparkeR, befree, pier
• Nerdrage.Pro – Caspian, Cynic, HVM, LS, Samwell
• Enemies in disbelief – Logzi, Danceyz, ajay, Jenko, JDD
• IGI.eSports – Skuxz, Plasmaz, Philo, WADDY, Archer
• Impulse Black – FrisB, Chubz, Leon!, kreaz, wAVE

The Outsiders

• Radix eSports – m1sfit, celld, adam, claw, kray
• Team XENEX – Gizmo, logaN, MarDanT, JPK, sHAW
• BYOCheat – Annex, Rybak, Ecls, Mattye, Kazuki
• McJob – mikeE, scram, synt, sean, adamski

(Should be noted… this isn’t the entire list of teams, and there are some teams I probably missed in certain sections. It should also be noted these teams are NOT seeds, and that these teams were compiled from the list on Reddit and what teams were signed up on Battlefy)

Setup in progress at the UK’s largest LAN event. (Source: Multiplay Flickr)

The Format

Group Stage

• Groups of 5/6
• Best Of One
• Veto
• Top 1/2 advance (To be decided at this point)

Eliminations

• Double Elimination, 16 teams
• Best of One / Best of Three
• Best of Five Grand Final (Upper Bracket 1 map advantage)

The teams knocked out from the group stage will then be placed into the Intermediate Tournament, where all teams will then play another group stage of Best of One and then move to a Best of One Double Elimination bracket for 8 teams. These teams will then play for free tickets back to insomnia59 in December.

Map Pool

• de_dust2
• de_nuke
• de_mirage
• de_overpass
• de_cobblestone
• de_train
• de_cache

Prize Pool

£7,500

• 1st: £3,750
• 2nd: £1,500
• 3rd: £900
• 4th: £450
• 5th – 8th: £225

The Schedule

All times are rough estimates at this point bar the starting times of the day, please note, delays have been known to happen at UK events, and so we advise you to keep an eye through the dedicated tournament website. Remember all times are in BST (British Summer Time).

Friday

• Group Game 1 – 1pm
• Group Game 2 – 2.30pm
• Group Game 3 – 4pm
• Group Game 4 – 6pm
• UK Masters Grand Final – 6pm
• Group Game 5 – 7.30pm
• Elimination Round 1 – 11pm

Saturday

• Upper Bracket Round 2/Lower Bracket Round 1– 10am
• Upper Bracket Round 3/Lower Bracket Round 2 – 12noon
• Lower Bracket Round 3 – 2pm
• Upper Bracket Final – 4:30pm
• Lower Bracket Semi-Finals – 5:30pm
• Lower Bracket Final – 8:30pm

Sunday

• Consolidation Final – 11am
• Grand Final – 4pm

Event Streams

Multiplay CS:GO Stream
Multiplay Twitch Stage Stream

We are live at the event taking photos, doing interviews, and bringing you lots of coverage to keep you upto date on insomnia58 so make sure you stay tuned to UKCSGO.com over the next few days for full event coverage and photos. You can follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page for all the daily news from insomnia58.