StarCraft 2 tourney Red Bull Battlegrounds has been ongoing for five months now, thankfully spread out across six separate events rather than being some kind of exhausting endurance event. The grand final takes place today in Washington DC, but you don't need to hop on a plane, a boat, or give your homemade teleporter a try in order to watch it—it's also being streamed on the internet, because 2014. The eSportsy shindig kicks off at 11AM EST, both today and tomorrow, which equates to 4PM in UK time. We've embedded a link to the stream below.
Here's the skinny on the tournament: eight StarCraft 2 pros will be battling each other today and tomorrow to win "the lion's share" of a sizeable $50,000 prize pool. At the start of the event they'll be split into two groups of four, in a "best of three round double elimination format. The first player to two wins will move on to the finals on Sunday". Players include Won Lee Sak (aka 'PartinG'), winner of last year's event, and casters/commentators include Day[9] (aka 'Sean Plott'). The event was preceded on Thursday by a panel entitled 'The Business of eSports', which might be worth a watch while you wait for the final to kick off. That, too, was streamed on Twitch, and it's available to watch here .
Here's the Twitch.tv embed link. Reminder: the final starts at 11AM EST.
Watch live video from redbullesports on www.twitch.tv
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.