2023/24 ESL Pro Tour - Format And Schedule

Republished By Plato

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TL.net ESPORTS

4 Posts

ESL has announced the format and schedule for the upcoming ESL Pro Tour.

As previously announced, the prior six regions have been merged into three: Europe, Asia, and Americas. The format for the regionals has changed, starting with a Swiss-style group stage before moving on to a more familiar single-elimiantion playoff format.

Regionals:

Europe: 32 players, 2 Swiss groups of 16 players
Asia: 16 players in a single Swiss group
Americas: 16 players in a single Swiss group

ESL SC2 Masters: Summer 2023 – $200,000 USD

Online Regionals – $125,000 USD
- Qualifiers: April 7th to 9th
- Week 1: May 2nd to 7th
- Week 2: May 9th to 14th
- Week 3: May 17th to 21st
ESL SC2 Masters: Summer 2023 played in Jönköping – June 16th to 18th – $75,000 USD

ESL SC2 Masters: Winter 2023 – $200,000 USD

Online Regionals – $125,000 USD
- Qualifiers: Oct 17th – 22
- Week 1: Oct 31st – Nov 19
- Week 2: November 7th to 12th
- Week 3: November 15th to 19th
ESL SC2 Masters: Winter 2023 played in Atlanta – December 15th to 17th – $75,000 USD

The offline ESL Masters events at DreamHack have changed in format as well. It has been scaled down into a 48-player competition (16 seeded players + 32 open qualifier players), and GSL-style groups have been removed in favor of multiple double-elimination brackets. Ultimately, it’s trading out one complicated format for another, but it eventually culminates in an 8-player single elimination playoffs. [Detailed diagram will be posted later]

The breakdown of the 16 seeded players at the offline ESL Masters events is as follows:

6 Players from GSL Season 1
4 Players from the ESLM Europe Regional
2 Players from the ESLM Americas Regional
1 Player from the ESLM Asia Regional
3 Players from the Global Standings

ESL Open Cups will resume giving ESL Pro Tour points on April 4th. The points and prize money splits remain the same.

For more details on seeding and regional qualifiers, read the full announcement on ESL’s official website.

Yoshi Kirishima

United States9645 Posts

Yay!!

Are there that many more EU players for it to have 32 players and Asia to have 16? Or is this just a case of ESL favoring its home region (which is totally understandable). Just curious, not sure how they usually do it.

argonautdice

Canada2471 Posts

So the Americas and Asia regions got the shaft compared to last year by having essentially 1 and 2 fewer guaranteed spots to the finals, respectively, especially for Asia since it’s a lot harder for players in the Asian region to travel to the offline events in Sweden/US.

Also does anyone enjoy Swiss-style group format? (Aside from the Swiss, I suppose?)

bela.mervado

Hungary273 Posts

On March 22 2023 05:49 argonautdice wrote:Also does anyone enjoy Swiss-style group format? (Aside from the Swiss, I suppose?)

I do.
Played quite a few years of curling, and it is usual to have swiss rounds in the first part of an event.
Always wondered how it would look to have swiss rounds instead of the round robin groups in sc2.

Mizenhauer

United States1137 Posts

Swiss doesn’t really work unless you have way more people. Magic tournaments make good use of it because tournament size is massive in comparison. Swiss actually makes sense to have 200 people play 9 rounds since you get a cleaner cut, but when you only have 16 people playing a million rounds you’re opening yourself up to some really awkward records/tiebreakers. Oh well.

Balnazza

198 Posts

On March 22 2023 07:19 Mizenhauer wrote:
Swiss doesn’t really work unless you have way more people. Magic tournaments make good use of it because tournament size is massive in comparison. Swiss actually makes sense to have 200 people play 9 rounds since you get a cleaner cut, but when you only have 16 people playing a million rounds you’re opening yourself up to some really awkward records/tiebreakers. Oh well.

I assume ESL will do it like they do it in Counterstrike. With 16 players (or teams in CS) there are no awkward tiebreakers whatsoever. It is a a clean system. When you have 3 wins, you advance. If you have 3 losses, you are out. It really plays out nicely.
https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Intel_Extreme_Masters/2022/Rio/Legends_Stage
For example, this was the Legend Stage in the last major. It guarantees every player has to play between three and five matches, depending on how good they perform.

This is a good scaled down ESL Tour overall, though I’m not convinced GSL really needs 6 slots. I’m also not sure how the Global Standings are supposed to work if they now qualify you to the events that usually give you the global standing points?
No word on the Championships yet?

dysenterymd

820 Posts

On March 22 2023 07:25 Balnazza wrote:

Show nested quote +

Considering there are still 10ish Koreans who are better than all but the very best foreigners, 6 spots is justified. Granted, some of those might not be able to travel due to impending military service.

I really don’t like 3 spots coming through the global standings, I’d much rather an extra spot be given to Korea, Europe, and one of Asia/Americas.