ESL Pro Tour 2022-23 Pre-season Update

With the third installment of the ESL Pro Tour ahead of us, we would like to let the community know what we are up to, and how the year of competitive StarCraft II is going to take shape. An overview on the circuit structure was outlined in our 2022 Announcement and the breakdown for this season follows below.

First Steps of the Competitive Calendar

The 2022/2023 season will have two EPT Masters competitions ahead of the EPT Championship in 2023, in a two stages fashion: The DreamHack Masters Regionals played online, leading to the offline finals hosted at DreamHack Festivals.

DreamHack SC2 Masters: Valencia 2022 - $338,000 USD

  • Qualifiers: May 3 - 8
  • Regionals: May 18 - Jun 5
  • DreamHack Valencia: Jul 1 - 3

DreamHack SC2 Masters: Atlanta 2022 - $338,000

  • Qualifiers: Sep 13 - 18
  • Regionals: Sep 28 - Oct 16
  • DreamHack Atlanta: Nov 18-20

Return to Live Events

We have been successfully carrying out our offline competitions on the ESL Pro Tour, with our first Masters Championship held at the IEM Katowice 2022 for StarCraft II. To give continuity to this we will follow the plan of having StarCraft II in our DreamHack Festivals at Valencia and Atlanta!

These events will have the established format from previous DreamHack events, a 80 players competition, with 3 Group stages and Knockout Bracket leading to the Playoffs. There are two ways to join the competition: By securing an invite through the DreamHack SC2 Masters Regionals and GSL Seasons, or by signing up to attend at the event. The invite distribution is the following:

DreamHack SC2 Masters: Valencia 2022

  • 6 Players from GSL Season 1
  • 4 Players from the DHM EU Regional
  • 2 Players from the DHM NA Regional
  • 1 Player from each DHM Regional among LatAm, China, TW/HK, and Oceanic & RoA

These 16 invites will receive travel and accommodation support to the event, and will be seeded into further stages of the competition. From the remaining 64 slots, 1 is being awarded to the first place of the ANZ Champs 2022 Season 1, and the other 63 slots will be open for all eligible contestants to sign up, but slots will be granted to players after those are weighted by the amount of EPT Points they hold. Any tiebreaker needed will follow point 2.2.2 on the EPT Regulations. With the return of offline play we would like to take this opportunity to mention that the removal of region-lock announced on the past year still is in effect.

Details on how to sign up for the offline event will be shared in the near future together with the qualification process and invitation for the regionals.

ESL Open Cup Update

Starting on April 4th we will kick off the 2022/23 season of Open Cups. Some of the changes made during the off season will be reverted as we start awarding Global Points:

  • Semifinals will remain Best-of-Three (Bo3)
  • 19 Global Points will be awarded per competition in a 10/5/2/2 split for the Top4
  • Prize pool for the Open Cups will be $400 USD per weekly edition

Ranking Update

With the beginning of a new year of competitions, the EPT Ranking will be reset to 0 and the race will be on for those that want to amass points through Regional and Partnered Events, as well as Open Cups. 

The complete regional breakdown can be found on the EPT ranking page (to be updated shortly).

Seeding Rules for 2022/2023 Competitions

Starting with our new season, the seeding process will follow the patterns established for 2021/22.

The seeding process for DH SC2 Masters: Valencia will be based on performances across the following order:

  • IEM Katowice 2022
  • EPT 2021/22 Standings

Once first season regionals are complete, the data from 2021/22 will be dropped and we will transition the seeding based on performances across:

  • Based on EPT 2022/23 Results, as outlined on the §2.2 of the Regulations.

Tiebreakers

The ESL Open Open Cups results will be used to decide any tiebreaker situations.

Player Invites for DH SC2 Masters: Valencia 2022

Following up the standard set in 2021/22 we will have half of the group stage re-invited from the previous year standings.

  • EU - 16x Players (Division size: 32)
  • NA - 8x Players (Division size: 16)
  • LA - 4x Players (Division size: 8)
  • CN - 4x Players (Division size: 8) 
  • TW & HK - 4x Players (Division size: 8)
  • OCE - 4x Players (Division size: 8)

To populate groups, there will be Open and Closed Qualifiers. The Closed Qualifiers will have returning players from 2021/22 Standings invited.

  • EU - 16x Players
  • NA - 8x Players
  • LA - 4x Players
  • CN - 4x Players
  • TW & HK - 4x Players
  • OCE - 4x Players

All player invitations as well as the details covering the competitions will be issued in the coming weeks.

Competitive map pool

ESL will keep working together with Blizzard and support the development of the pro scene and to the factors that are of major importance to its development, which includes the map pool.

For more regular updates, please follow our social media account ESLSC2.

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