The group stages are over and bracket play is well underway at Insomnia 65. With several big names within the UKCS scene all in contention,
iseries
It is time for insomnia64 Counter-Strike tournament to begin. Once again, the iSeries admin team has opted to go with the famous Swiss group stage, which means that teams will get a set amount of games where they have to fight it out to make it to the elimination bracket. With 44 teams entering (meaning a £6,250 prize pool), it should be an action packed weekend.
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.
So as we have no official stream or GOTVs on Day one, I decided to tailor my skills and go on a little bit of a writing rampage, especially as the usual crew I play with are also away currently. It is day one of the insomnia63 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament for a whopping £30,000 and I wanted to have a look at the numbers.
When I had a quick glance the other day on the insomnia63 sign up list, there was a group of names I recognised from the Counter-Strike: Source and early CS:GO days, that I hadn’t really seen in a long time. The team named “Reborn” hosts a wealth of former old talent, including Matthew “Holl1s” Hollis and Aidan “foolio” Wood The team is spearheaded by Jay “f00b” Davenport, the player we are interviewing now.
Since we announced that insomnia63 would have a whopping £30,000 up for grabs last month, there has always been a question mark on how many teams would get paid prize money through the expanded prize pool. In normal iSeries events, the prize pool would be distributed to the Top 8, and everyone else would just suffer, however we can reveal new information to the public on how many teams will get paid this time round and with what money.
The Group stages have concluded, and now it’s time for the Elimination Bracket. For the first time, in a very very long time at an iSeries event, we have finally got a big wish where 31 teams square up to each other and play in the Elimination Bracket. That means the top two from each group get promoted and one of the UK Masters Finalists get placed into the bracket.
Always the fun part of LAN for some of the worst teams in the scene, and the boring part for some of the better teams, it is the group stage. The groups kicked off a few hours ago after a series of delays due to an issue with the networking side of the tournament platform they had brought in for this event. This meant a lot of confusion and issues, and debates on whether to move back to Battlefy.
Multiplay have today announced that they have been forced to drop plans for their usual third LAN of the year and cancel insomnia62 for this year. In a big move, they have cited that costs at the National Exhibition Centre had become an issue for their smallest LAN of the year.