We are relaunching our Friday night fun weekly tournaments this week. On Friday March 29th our first weekly tournament will be kicking off at 7pm over on our FACEIT page.
We’re entering week four of the renewed UKCSGO Weekly Tournament and we’ve seen some great talent shine so far in the matches.
Today we’re making a change that will impact all players in the tournaments whether you play it for fun or take it seriously. As part of our partnership with FACEIT we’ve been given access to enable their anti-cheat client on our tournaments.
So from now on when playing a UKCSGO Weekly, the FACEIT Anti-Cheat Client must be enabled at all times, you can find a link to the anti-cheat by clicking here and choosing the correct option for your version of windows (sorry Mac and Linux users.)
Once it’s installed and you have restarted your computer, You will be presented with the login screen. Simply login with your FACEIT email address and password and when you see the screen below you’re good to close the window and the client will run in the background.
What the client will look like fully operational
You can sign up to our next tournament by clicking here and check out our FACEIT organizer page which you can follow and view any upcoming tournaments we have going on too.
Towards the end of last year the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament vanished from our screens with very little warning or explanation. The reason for this is we turned our focus to the neverending task of bringing back UKCSGO County Championship, and we also started to look at other platforms as we were having increased problems with FaceIt each week. We are happy to say, the search for a new platform is over, and the County Championship is well underway!
There are very few tournament platforms out there that offer a completely automated experience, which is why we are happy our new home for tournaments is none other than, FaceIt! That’s right, our search for a new platform took us full circle back to where we started.
The UKCSGO hub over on FaceIt. More functionality, more control, more events.
The main reason for the decision to keep the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament on FaceIt is we have been accepted as an official FaceIt organiser. This status change gives us much more control over our tournaments, including the ability to admin our own games. This means that when a team runs into issues, they can come to us directly, rather than wait in the live support queue. To keep things simple too, the support system is built into the FaceIt platform, so you don’t need to leave you web browser to get the support you need.
FaceIt has also given us access to add FaceIt points to our tournaments as prizes. Before, FaceIt admins had to manually add the points to each tournament but now we have our own bank of points which we can divvy out on our tournaments. These points will be split between the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament and other events which we are planning on running.
This upgrade to our account also means you can follow the UKCSGO page to be alerted to new tournaments that are created. We plan on running a lot more UK-focused online events this year to offer more to the grass root teams to get involved with.
Another thing we want to do for both the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament, and other events we run, is help new casters get some experience and get noticed. In order to do this, we are creating a database of UK casting talent and people that want to break into casting. We have created a Google form for you to fill out, if you are interested, to help us keep track of everyone.
Coming into week 12 of the UKCSGO weekly cup we see some new and old faces. As the tournament continues to grow we’re expecting to see a lot more upcoming teams take their shot at winning 10,000 FACEIT points!
As we dive into game one, we saw Meme take on NSFUK. The map that these two teams decided to battle it out on was Train, although not seen all that much in the competitive map pool it still remains one of the more ‘tactical’ maps. With high expectations for both teams Meme lead by Kyle ‘Swaggyavi‘ Wilson take the knife round and start on Terrorists. Train is still considered a Counter-Terrorist sided map by many so this was a bold move, but as we got into the game we soon saw the raw potential of this mix. Meme ended up taking five round before NSFUK could score one back for themselves. It wasn’t looking good for NSFUK. Out of nowhere NSFUK started to take back rounds like they owned the playing field, stopping any attempt ‘Swaggyavi’ and his team of memes tried to make to gain control of a site. With the score now tied at five – five the game continued to go back and forth between the teams with the half ending in favor of NSFUK eight to seven. As the game pushed on to the second half the Meme team started to show their stronger side like the first few rounds of the Terrorist side, constantly stopping any attempt NSFUK made to enter the sites. The final score? 16-10 to the meme team as they progressed into the quarter-finals.
Going into the second game of the night, again on train, we see DotSD take on Radix. We’ve seen Radix take part in our tournaments before so hopefully that means they can put on a show, and a show they put on. Starting the game very strong on CT going 8 rounds before DotSD were able to take a round back for themselves, it started to look a little bit like the last game with Meme and NSFUK. Radix proved that to not be the case, plowing on to take the half to twelve to three. Radix showed no signs of stopping into the second half continuing to dominate DotSD to the very end, 16-3.
What would be the final game of the night was about to start between SpeedyG’s Mix and Decodea. “But how could it be the final game , the quarter-finals were just played?” I’ll get to that at the end. As we jump into Cobblestone we already start to see players from the the Decodea side experience connection issues. After winning the knife round and opting to start on the Terrorist side Decodea called a timeout for one of their players to reconnect, SpeedyG’s Mix understood and patiently waited for the player to reconnect. The game starts with all ten players connected and Decodea take the first round… and another six after that. It wasn’t looking good for SpeedyG or his team. He didn’t let the score dishearten him and neither did his mix. It looks like they have Decodea sussed and bring the score back to seven – eight for the half. Things were looking up for the player. Decodea had other plans as they decide to push forward into the Counter Terrorist side twelve to eight. SpeedyG’s Mix were struggling, a very rare situation for the players being regulars in the tournament. The game ended up closing out 16-10. Through-out the game there was some accusations against the Decodea side for cheating and “skipping” around the map. Before heading into the finals to face 6stan1ey a FACEIT Admin (Waves) called to speak to the Decodea player in live support. We’re not quite sure happened from here on but sources say that the team was disqualified for failing to produce a demo of the game, no player received a ban as of writing this.
This was my first article for UKCSGO, if you fancy checking out any of the weekly cups do a quick search on www.faceit.com for “ukcsgo”.
It has a few weeks now since moving over to FACEIT to fully automate our weekly cups, and for the most part it has all been pretty smooth. We have had a couple of non-UK teams slip through the cracks but that is almost unavoidable when using such a popular website which promotes our tournaments. The whitelist that we put in place fixed this problem, but also opened the door up to a new issue. Some teams were trying to sign up last minute with players from a country which wasn’t on the whitelist. This caused some teams to not be able to play in the tournament as once check-in starts, the whitelist couldn’t be edited. There is no easy way round this issue so I urge teams to not leave it to the last second to sign up, if possible.
Change of day
We will be changing the day our Weekly Tournaments run on as Thursdays are becoming a little crowded and we want to make sure as many teams as possible are able to enter our events. Because of this, we will be moving our Weekly Tournament to Friday nights. It will still be a 7pm start with checkin opening at 6pm with each round scheduled to start one hour after the previous. If interest picks up, we could also expand the tournament to a 32 team event as an extra hour of games won’t matter as much on a Friday.
Sign-ups are open for our first Friday night Weekly Tournament so head on over to claim your spot. If you need a country whitelisting, don’t forget to direct message us on Twitter.
Firstly, we have created the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament #10 over on FACEIT ready for teams to sign up to.
Stepping back to the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament #9, we had a small rule infraction with a couple of full-EU teams taking part in the event. With FACEIT, we have no direct way to remove teams from the tournament, or restrict the number of players who need to be from a certain country. The FACEIT system only has a country based whitelist which means anyone from those countries can sign up. Because we have always allowed players from other counties to join teams, so long as the majority remains UK, we had a select number of countries on the whitelist to allow some regulars to play. It is because of this whitelist that some all-EU teams were able to take part in the Weekly Tournament #9.
How are we fixing this?
From now on, each tournament will have just the UK whitelisted. Other countries will be added to the whitelist upon request from the team, and we will be in close communication with FACEIT to remove any teams that do not have at least 3 UK players. If you need another country adding to the whitelist, then direct message us on Twitter so we can add it to the list.
Over the last month the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament has been a little less “weekly” than we would have liked. This is normally due to the amount of admining power the tournament takes, and a shortage of admins. Even when fully staffed, the start of the tournament is no where near as fluid as it could be. This is why we have made the decision to move our cups to the Faceit platform.
Moving to Faceit gives us complete use of their tournament system which includes in browser vetoing, which will put an end to the confusion at the start of every round as teams work out where to veto. For now, we will gauge how the nigh progresses with this time-saving feature, and if we find it speeds the night up enough we will expand the tournament to 32 teams. This move has also opened the door for teams to gain Faceit points for placing highly in our Weekly Tournament.
Signups are now open for the UKCSGO Weekly Tournament #8 on the Faceit platform so head on over and create your accounts and teams. We will be bringing more details on this tournament shortly.
As you may know, our third weekly tournament was played last Thursday and “Team Noop Hours” came through on top, here we’ll be taking a look back through the tournament as a whole, as well as previewing the next one which you can sign up for here.
It all started at 7PM, the first match on stream was AlwaysOnEco (who we’ve seen in the tournament before, playing under the name TiltSmalling) vs a mix team called Funk. It was a short affair as Funk stayed in control for the whole map, making sure AlwaysOnEco lived up to their name. They won only 4 rounds over the course of the game and were knocked out early. Every other match went off without a hitch, with every seeded team (5, based on previous tournament performance) beating their opponents without much resistance.
Next it was the Quarter Finals, our second seeded team exceL eSports went up against Team Cheaters (aptly named after one of their members got the team disqualified the week before) on de_cbble. Cheaters looked to have exceL on the ropes for a while, even being in the lead for a few rounds, but exceL managed to come back and take the map 16-10, heading into the Semi-Finals against XLNCE, our top seed.
Another match in the Quarter Finals, Aftershock vs Reborn, went to overtime, with both teams trading rounds throughout regulation time. Overtime in UKCSGO tournaments is MR5 16k. Reborn even lost the first 2 overtime rounds but they regained momentum and brought the next 3 back to their favour, making the score 17-18. Aftershock again grabbed the first 2 rounds of the next half but Reborn once again took control. It was 19-20 and it came down to a 2vs2, however players Lykos and Stempy outclassed their opponents and took the final round for Reborn, sending them into the Semi-Finals.
We then went into our Semi-Finals. The match on stream was Team Noop Hours vs Reborn, the team that only just survived overtime vs Aftershock. It was a very one sided affair as the TNH roster included 3 well known players: PerilousFURY‘s SpeedyG, ex-MnM player vertiGo and the ex-coach of team EZSkins Sliggy. Noop Hours took the match 16-4.
Our other Semi-Final was a real show, XLNCE vs exceL eSports. The map chosen was Cache and it looked to be a stomp as exceL took the first half 4-11, but their terrorist side lacked substance. After winning the first 2 rounds of the second half, XLNCE dropped another, bringing it to 12-6, but a great eco round by them threw the momentum into their favor. They took the score from 6-12 to 13-12. exceL answered with one more of their own, bringing it to a tie but XLNCE had money to spare, they bought again and won the round, breaking the economy of exceL. 14-13 exceL force bought and had just one AK-47 to play with, a great opening frag by player KoRaL- had XLNCE on the back foot, more entries went exceL‘s way and they ended up winning the round only dropping one player.
XLNCE were now all out of cash, they force bought what they could but exceL took the last 2 rounds by storm, stopping the comeback and winning the map 16 to 14.
Our final for this week was played as a best of one, on request from both teams as it was getting late. the map chosen by veto was Mirage, with TNH starting on the Terrorist side.
A clean pistol round by the all-star line up instantly shifted the momentum into their favor, they took the first 6 rounds before exceL responded. The first half finished 8-7 in the favor of TNH. exceL took the second pistol, however TNH‘s experience and skill outclassed exceL and they won the anti-eco and 6 more rounds off the back of that. They were 1 round away from victory but exceL hadn’t given up just yet, they won one more round yet it came down to a 1v1 and their economy was dire. TNH full bought and took the last round to another 1v1 where TNH‘s skill and experience reigned supreme, making the final score 16-9 in the favour of TNH
Congratulations to Team Noop Hours, they took 1st place for the week. Everyone had fun last week and we got some great feedback from players in order to make this week’s tournament even better.
TNH’s Sliggy also gave a quote to UKCSGO:
It was my first night off in a while since observing ECS and thought I would see how the ‘lower’ end of uk competitive scene was progressing with the boys, I was pleasantly surprised had a lot of fun and some good games. The servers reg was almost as good as my plays so shoutout to CRISPsrv.co.uk
As Sliggy mentioned, all our servers were provided by our awesome sponsor CRISPsrv, go over to their website CRISPsrv.co.uk and pick yourself up a cheap server.
VODs for last week can also be found on your Youtube channel.
If you want to be part of the next UKCSGO Weekly Cup. Signups are open and you and your team can sign up over here. If you think your team is good enough to stand up to the likes of exceL and XLNCE, come and prove it. Our tournaments are hosted by us every week, streamed on our hitbox channel, and we aim to give the best possible one-night-cup experience for UK teams of any level.
We are pleased to announce that we are almost ready to launch the UKCSGO Weekly Tournaments. We announced that we started work on this after JGL closed its doors, and since then we are been working hard to get everything in order to keep these weekly tournaments alive.
We aim to start running the weekly events after iSeries, which takes place over Easter weekend at the NEC in Birmingham. In order to make sure everything runs smoothly for the official launch, we are setting up a 16 team benchmark tournament, and to see if we have missed anything.
We will be running the tournament in collaboration with Battlefy. We spent a long time looking round tournament sites to find the right site home for us, and feel that Battlefy offers the features we need in order to run our events.
You can sign up for our Benchmark Tournament over on our Battlefy page and find full information on the format and rules. We will be using our own servers for all our events which are setup with eBot to take the stress away from reporting scores. These servers have very kindly been given to us by a fast-growing game server provider, CRISPsrv who you should definitely check out if you are in the market for a game server. They have servers based in the UK, Germany and France to offer server locations to suit most people.
Tournament admins can be reached via our Discord server, so if you have any questions about this event, or future events you can jump on there.
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