UKGT have announced that they will be dropping two of the qualifiers for their premier season, and are reducing the number of teams in the final stages from 16, to 10. The main reason behind this change is to prevent a clash with ESL UK’s EPS qualifiers, which they announced earlier this week.
These changes see the qualifiers on the 6th, 7th and 8th of January remain in place, while the ones on the 9th and 10th are dropped. There is no word yet on when signups will be open for these qualifiers, but we expect it will be announced between Christmas and New Year.
This is the second change to the format we’ve seen from UKGT. After receiving a lot of negative feedback regarding their ruling on only allowing UK residents to compete in their event, they decided to change their stance and allow one non-UK resident in each team. This still leaves some adjustment for teams that have grown accustomed to the standard 3/2 split which has been in place for so long, but it also shows UKGT’s desire to make this about UK players and teams, rather than teams hinging their hopes on a Robin/Tsack style powerhouse which we have seen so often.
Robin – The go-to person when you want to win a UK event.
After the three 32 team qualifiers, the 6 qualified teams, and 4 invited teams, will compete in Season 1. This will start on 17th January, and run until 16th February. Each week there will three game nights, Tuesday till Thursday, comprised of two best of twos. Once this stage is over, the top four teams will be invited to take place at the live finals, hosted in the Milton Keynes shopping centre at the Middleton hall venue.
