Plantronics, creator of high-end PC and console gaming peripherals have teamed up with ESET UK Masters for Season 2! Not only do we have the £10,000 prize pool but we now have some gorgeous headsets for the winners

Prizes Include

• GAMECOM 380:The Plantronics® GameCom® 380 delivers immersive, stereo sound with deep, resonating bass via 40mm speakers. The noise-cancelling microphone kills background noise so your commands are loud and clear.
• GAMECOM 780: The Plantronics GameCom 780 USB headset with Dolby® technologies transforms standard audio into a stunning 7.1 surround sound experience. The noise-cancelling microphone kills background noise so your commands are loud and clear.
• GAMECOM COMMANDER: Victory is yours with the tournament-ready Plantronics GameCom Commander PC headset. With its closed-ear design and unmatched noise isolation, audio, and voice technology, the GameCom Commander shuts out distractions while immersing you in 7.1 Dolby stereo surround sound.

Watch out for the full announcement of Season 2 in the first week of June, and tune in to our weekly broadcasts over at Twitch.tv each week and catch all the best Starcraft 2 action.

ESET UK gave away £10,000 in season 1 of the ESET UK Masters, which saw the epic finals hosted at Insomnia48 in March. Some of the best players in the world faced off in Telford, England and the champion was crowned.

Season 2

Season 2 qualifiers will begin soon online, with yet another £10,000 prize fund available for the championship tournament at the end of the season. This will be in the form of online tournaments hosted over on esetukmasters.com and include open tournaments and invitationals.

We are aiming to have the online tournaments take place on different evenings to the Blizzard World Championship Series so everyone can still take part. Also doing this means you can watch the stream and enjoy the tournaments from home! Watch our awesome casting team of John “JoRoSaR” Sargent, Adam “Madals” Simmons and Kaj “Lyrlian” Landman (and potentially some guest casters!) and catch some of the best Heart of the Swarm action on the ESET Twitch channel.

Unfortunately due to tournament licensing we cannot run the ESET UK Masters Season 2 grand finals at the Insomnia49 event, so we have decided to create a brand new event in September especially for our grand finals, with the venue still to be announced. We will still be hosting a qualifier at Insomnia49 for the Starcraft 2 community, so some spaces in the Grand Finals event will be available for the BYOC attendees. We are still negotiating whether we can have an extra prize pool for this qualifier, but expect an announcement about that soon!

Ladders

One other way you can get involved with the ESET UK Masters is our soon to be launched Season 2 Ladder! Taking place on the esetukmasters site, you will be able to challenge other players on the ladder and see who can be the best players in the community. Earn better seeding positions in our open qualifiers based on your ladder position as time goes on and spot prizes for the most consistent ladder players that play the most games each month!

Make sure you tune in tonight as we have TLR eSports Revolution taking on Edification Empire Spida in a ZvP UK Challenger match.

For the main Showdown we have two top players, Awesome Gaming Fuzer vs Western Wolves Sortof! These guys are battling it out in a TvZ for the lions share of £170!

Make sure you tune in over at our Twitch channel at 19:00 BST, and tell us who you think will win over on the Teamliquid thread.

Season 1 of the ESET UK Masters was an amazing tournament, spanning 3 months, involving 391 players and hundreds of matches, over 270,000 hours of Starcraft action has been viewed by fans around the world (that is THIRTY YEARS of tournament streams!).

There were some great games, players disappointed and players ecstatic. Some, even without winning made a name for themselves and took the Starcraft community by storm. Players who, until recently, were not known well took down mighty names while said legends and frequent winners crushed opponents throughout.

Macro, Micro, harassment and strategic movements shaped the event and eventual outcome. Teams members fell and team members stood in solidarity all with the joint aim of holding the 1st place title (and cheque) above their heads victorious. If you visit our YouTube channel can find many of the best matches from the weekend as well as highlight games from the online qualifiers. Enjoy, learn and prepare for season 2!

Also if you want to see some interviews from our Season 1 finals coverage partner Definitive eSports then check out this playlist from the Season 1 finals. Featuring interviews with Sting, CranK, Snute, TLO and our casters you have hours of content to watch right there!

Once again we have a "between seasons" Showdown showmatch for your viewing pleasure, with the UK only "Challenger" match to warm you up!

Tonight's challenger match will bring AndyPandy against WCS UK Finalist Moomin in a best of 5 where the winner will bag £30. Support the best players in the UK by watching tonight!

And for the main event, we have a crowd favourite Goody facing off against a tough opponent - Minato! Head on over to the TeamLiquid thread and tell us who is going to win these match ups. Your commentators for tonight will be the lovable duo Lyrlian and Madals, who will entertain you for hours of Heart of the Swarm action!

Click me to watch the stream any time after 19:00 BST

If you are keeping up with our ESET UK Masters showdowns we have another corker this week!

UK Challenger Match

This week's UK player challenger match has FM eSports' Pughy taking on TLR eSports' Remnant in a PvZ at 19:00 BST. Who do you think will take this best of 5 showmatch, and win the £30 prize? Give us your opinion over at the TeamLiquid thread.

Headline - Showdown Match

Playing in the £170 best of 9 headline Showdown match are much loved Quantic Hyun vs our ESET UK Masters reigning season 1 champion, Liquid Snute! Grab a cup of tea and some biscuits and settle down in front of the screen for the best ZvZ you will watch all night!

Our ESET UK Masters showdowns continue weekly while we work on our Season 2 announcement. Tomorrow night we have a treat for you! Starting at 7PM BST tune in and watch the following Heart of the Swarm™ action!

UK Challenger Match

Our UK challenger match will see popular UK players battle it out for a £30 prize. FM Esports Razerblader will take on Road Gaming's Demon, in a best of 5 TvT matchup for your entertainment. Head over to the TeamLiquid thread to tell us who you think will win.

Headline - Showdown Match

Fan favourite WhiteRa will be featuring and will be taking on Mouz h0pe in a best of 9 Showdown for the lions share of £170. Casters Lyrlian and Madals will be bringing you all of the action from our twitch channel.

There can only be one winner, but there can be some surprises along the way! Liquid came fighting with their trio of European Zerg with Ret and Snute and TLO always aiming for a podium finish. But I shall get to that later....

Firstly, lets touch upon the bring your own computer (BYOC) qualifier held on the Friday before the event at insomnia 48. There were some great players in the mix, some of who had attempted to qualify during the online stages but were unable to do so. Notably TLO, JonnyREcco, Ourk and Ziktomini were looking to secure their place in the finals and indeed managed to do so alongside some very talented UK players from teams such as Infused, FM-eSports and Roar Gaming.

Moving onto the main tournament beginning with the group stages which were incredibly impressive with a few big shocks. It is worth highlighting that one of the favourites to take the whole event, ForGG, was caught in an awkward 3/4th place tie in a group where the top 3 advance. It started off well for him, but BabyKnight and JonnyREcco both managed to beat him 2:1. BabyKnight and ForGG were both tied with ForGG slightly better on map score. However, the tournament rules clearly stated that in a tie the head to head result would decide meaning ForGG was knocked out in the group stage!

Group stages saw all the Liquid players advance top of their group as well as two Germans in TLO and the up and coming HeRoMaRinE going 5-0.

While I could talk a lot about the games in the RO12 onwards I think it best to just highlight some key results and leave you to go watch the VODs! One of the most exciting games was the QF between JonnyREcco and HeRoMaRinE which went to the 5th and final map. As well as being exceptionally closely matched in skill, both players had a lot to prove. JonnyREcco, on the hunt for a new team after leaving Team Dignitas a few weeks ago was keen to impress potential scouts where as HeRoMaRinE was no doubt looking to make a shock as the youngest competitor at the event. Both had solid play but HeRoMaRinE eventually managed to take it and advanced to the semi-finals where he lost to Sting.

Our two finalists Snute and Sting

The finals were incredible intense, the map score of 3-0 to snute really does not give the full story. Each game was very close, both players putting on an amazing performance. The final engagement for Snute was great, flying overlords in ahead of his army to trigger widow mines that really summed up just how thought out all of his plays had been throughout the event.

The final results were as follows:
1st place: Liquid Snute
2nd place: Western Wolves Sting
3rd place: mousesports HeRoMaRinE

In preparation for the Grand Finals that will be taking place next week, resident caster Madals has created a series of casts from the HotS beta to show us all just what these talented players have in store for us.

The games themselves range from long macro games to intense micro wars and were submitted by the players themselves to showcase their skill to tempt you into cheering them on come the 22nd March!

Make sure you all keep up to date with the latest action over at: Team Liquid & The Youtube playlist

Below is the exact schedule of release from Madals himself

With just one week left until the Grand Finals of ESET UK Masters Season 1, we thought that it was about time to check in with the 2012 champion, Team Dignitas' BlinG and see how he is adapting to Heart of the Swarm. In this weeks showmatch, his Zerg opponent will be none other than DIMAGA..

As well as our main show match, we will also be hosting our regular challenger series game between Karnage Jimmeh, an iseries veteran, versus a new and upcoming player who recently signed with The Last Resort, none other than the RMP.

Tonights casters will be Adam "Madals" Simmons and John "JoRoSaR" Sargent, who will be following all of the action on our Twitch channel. Discuss tonight's matches and vote for who you think will win over on the Team Liquid thread. Make sure you tune in from 7pm till late!

Now all the serious work has been completed and we have our first 12 qualifiers for the ESET UK Masters Grand Finals at Insomnia48, we will continue with our weekly show match schedule for your entertainment!

Tonight at 7pm GMT we have our Challenger Match where we put together some of the UKs up and coming talent against each other to win the £30 challenger prize pot. This is followed by the evenings headline Showdown where two players compete in a huge BO9 to win the lion's share of the £170 prize pool.

Last week we saw the finale of the Open Qualifier #2 where another 3 players for the £10,000 grand finals in Telford were decided. Now we have a full list of qualified players to fill half of the groups in preparation for Insomnia48.

We did not live cast of the semi final between WW Sting vs Axiom Heart so instead there are exclusibe VODs for you to watch over on our awesome YouTube channel - check them out here and see some incredible high level play between these two Korean professionals. Don't read any further if you want to find out who wins by watching the VODs!

Also because of a previous qualified player dropping out (Sage can no longer make the finals) we ran a 3rd place playoff to see who would take this final spot. If you want to check out the VOD for this match, click here. Again, stop reading here if you don't want to see who wins this match!

You can still take part in this tournament, just grab yourself a BYOC ticket over at the Insomnia48 site and then visit the BYOC qualifier page to sign up and take part! You just need to be able to attend Insomnia48 in Telford, England, from the 22nd - 24th March,and bring your own PC for the qualifier. Don't worry if you do not qualify for the finals as there is plenty of other fun activity including massive giveaways, being able to meet the players and some fun tournaments. Also if you are staying at home you will be able to follow the action live from your home on our Twitch.tv channel.

With Qualifier 2 so close to being completed, we almost have our 12 finalists for the £10,000 grand finals at Insomnia48. Tonight we had around 100 players compete to take the last available qualifier spots, we are now down to the wire.

Our first qualified player this evening is the incredible LiquidRet, who managed to take down some immense players like MaNa, MMA and finally QxC and Nerchio to truly earn that coveted spot in the finals.

The second semi final, between Sting and Heart (Player90) is going to be played tomorrow and we are going to collect replays and get them broadcasted for you as a little treat next week! The reason we did not play this match tonight is that both players are Korean, and with some matches taking longer then expected they were starting to play matches at 8am and tiredness was seriously affecting their play, so we the ESET UK Masters admin team allowed them to get some rest and play fresh later!

One more interesting change - unfortunatley our previous qualifier Sage cannot make the event, and so we are going to run a 3rd place qualifier from tonights tournament (Nerchio vs Loser of Sting and Heart) and the winner of that will take his place at the finals! This will also be cast from replay next week as part of our special treat to you guys! Make sure you watch over on our Youtube channel! More details to follow!

Watch out for a full write up of the final qualifier soon, and remember to play safe and grab your free ESET Antivirus 6 trial over here.

Welcome to week 4 of the first season of the ESET UK Masters! There is still time to sign up to our second open online qualifier, just create your esetukmasters.com account above, and then click here and you should see a green sign up button. This first open will take part on Thursday 21st Feb @ 19:00 GMT (20:00 CET) and is a single elimination format. There are TWO spots in the grand finals up as prizes, where you receive:

• Up to £150 travel contribution to get to the event.
• Hotel room in Telford for the weekend
• Free entry into Insomnia48
• i7 gaming PC for the duration of the tournament
• One of 24 exclusive spots in the £10,000 HOTS tournament finals

When you are all signed up, make sure you come back to the site and "check in" to confirm your place between 18:00GMT(19:00CET) and 18:45GMT(19:45CET). Signing up alone is NOT confirmation of a tournament place, so make sure you remember to check in.

Make sure you have your correct Heart of the Swarm Battlenet ID registered to your profile or you will not be able to take part in the tournament! This is the easiest way to find another player to play a match. At the very least make sure you join the esetukmasters chat channel on Battle.net (in game) so you can speak to the tournament administrators.

Click me to visit the Open Cup #2 page!

What are you waiting for? You could earn one of those spots at the £10,000 grand finals at Insomnia48 in Telford, England!

Love was in the air this Valentines days, love for HotS and the 16 world class players who had assembled to compete for the 3 seeds at the Grand Finals in March! The first round saw things go pretty much as expected. Crank vs ToD was the first game and saw ToD take the first game against Axioms Korean power house! The subsequent games saw ToD get frustrated at his own play where he felt that he had made a lot of mistakes and therefore ended the series 2-1.

The luck was out for Liquids TLO going 0-2 vs Fuzer who showed us all that Finland had some quality Terran players. Liquid saw some success with Ret who managed to make it through the first round to come across Crank. Straight off the bat CranK was leaving nothing to chance. On Star Station, Ret tried to go for a Hatch first opening that was promptly punished with a cannon rush that was able to deny the expansion before it was cancelled.

The cannon rush from CranK left Ret's hatchery rather exposed

Crank continued to deny his opponants expansions with pylon blocks and continual harassment forcing Ret into the uncomfortable position where he had to transition into Roach / Hyrda just to defend while his drone count was far lower than he may have hoped (just 45 at the 10 min mark). Behind all of this, CranK just expanded as normal to create a strong force that effortlessly dealt with Ret's attempts to push through it with a Swarm Host / Corruptor composition. Ret eventually lost the series 2-0.

If one person stood out through the event it had to be ForGG, without losing a single map the whole night he steam rolled his way through to qualifier and secured his spot in the grand finals and showed that even in Heart of the Swarm Korean Terrans are able to dominate in foreign events.

HeRoMaRinE also deserves highlighting as a player who punched above his weight class. The 15 year old Terran from mousesports advanced through past HappyZerg and Quantics HwangSin before being placed in 3rd 4th after a loss to CranK in the semi-finals . Up against FXO's Strelok, HeRoMaRinE really showed his determination and desire to qualify and managed to end out the invitational with a 3-1 win at the last hurdle.

Congratulations to CranK, ForGG and HeRoMaRinE who will be attending the ESET UK Masters Grand Finals on March 22-25th for their chance to win part of the £10,000 prize pool!

Make sure to check out Open Qualifier #2 this Thursday 21st, where the final 2 qualified players will be found!

The players are in. The games are loaded. Settle in this evening with a beverage of your choice and load up our free 1080p stream featuring Heart of the Swarm action and some of the best professional players we could find! They will be battling for the next 3 spaces in the £10,000 grand finals, and as we have seen so far, with the game being so new, anything could happen!

Make sure you tune in because we will be giving away Heart of the Swarm beta keys, and ESET NOD32 antivirus 6 twelve month licenses both tonight and tomorrow night in the twitch chat channel, so you can be safe while you game!

The tournament is a single elimination format, beginning with the BO3 format, meaning that every player is going to have to be on their game. So, who is playing tonight?

• Strelok (T)
• Crank (P)
• HappyZerg (Z)
• MorroW (t)
• Fuzer (T)
• TLO (Z)
• Turuk (T)
• Shew (P)
• HeRoMaRinE (T)
• ToD (P)
• HwangSin (P)
• MaNa (P)
• Ret (Z)
• ForGG (T)
• DreAm (P)
• Feast (P)

That is an INCREDIBLY stacked exciting tournament if we ever saw one! Make sure you tune in to the action starting at 7pm GMT! Brackets will be available here.

The player list was stacked beyond all measure. Any attempt to predict the result was near impossible and the only thing assured before the first game was that we were all about to witness some incredible displays of skill, determination and maybe a little luck. 6 Rounds later, ESET UK Masters had its next two finalists.

The Early Rounds

Rounds 1 to 3 were in the Best of 1 map (BO1) format with BO3 for all further rounds. There were not many surprises early on, being an open bracket many players had the opportunity to play versus professionals from all over the world. From the pro side, round 3 saw a few surprises start to set in. We lost BratOK as well as Ziktomini, JonnyREcco, miniraser and Bischu all falling at this tough stage!

Round 4 Onwards

Round 4 and the first BO3 saw things start to get serious. Notably NrSWelmu managed to go 2:1 vs LiquidTLO in an incredible PvZ. For me, Welmu had one of the best games of the event vs TLO on Daybreak. Starting with a normal Forge Fast Expand but going into Stalker with Mothership Core harassment at the third. This aggression was relentless and climaxed with Welmu spotting TLO going for a surround with a couple of Dark Templar that gave the Protoss player the opportunity to snipe the Hatchery before using Mass Recall to return to safety; all while destroying TLO's worker line! Other notable results in Round; Strelok 2:0'd GoOdy and AxiomHeart 2:0'd MorroW in some tough TvT's.

Welmu destroying TLO's 3rd before using Mass Recall when surrounded by lings

The Finish Line

Being a single elimination event, the Quarter Finals were the last stumbling block before reaching the all important game (and the chance to win one of two spots in the Grand Finals). AnexisVerdi took both his games vs the Korean Sting while Welmu continued his dominating run by crushing Strelok to take a place in a PvP Semi-Final.

The Semi-Finals, where both winners would earn a place at the Grand Finals, were no disappointment. Welmu vs Verdi was a tough series with Welmu favouring a 3 gate Voidray style that was successful in game 1 but unfortunately could not stop Verdi in game 2 and 3. Meanwhile, the second semi-final was all Korean seeing Sage face off against Heart. While both showed us some incredible play and wide range of strategies, Sage held off Hearts relentless Terran Mech aggression in both games to take the series 2:0.

Thank you to all for tuning in and I hope it was as enjoyable to watch as it was to cast. The next action from ESET UK Masters will be shown on Wednesday 12th Feb at 19:00 GMT with the second Invitational Qualifier. It will be cast by Madals & JoRoSaR.

Written by @MadalsSC2
Visit Madals' YouTube Channel

The Season 1 Open Qualifier #1 has completed, with two more players added to our grand finals roster come March! Congratulations to Verdi and Sage, who will both be joining us in Telford at Insomnia48 for the ESET UK Masters Season 1 Grand final and a chance at a share of £10,000! Expect a full write-up soon.

Dear ESET UK Masters Open cup #1 players and spectators,