CPL Holland Counter-Strike Qualifier

While the more outgoing amongst the population are legging it around London in chicken suits, battle-hardened Counter-Strike teams will be trouping along to a semi-invitational tournament at The Playing Fields today to compete for a prize purse of £2,000 and an autoberth into the CPL Holland event next month. The usual CPL rules apply with a few exceptions, which can be found here at TPF.co.uk. As the day progresses, we'll be providing live updates, as well as a full write up tomorrow lunchtime. Of late, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding CS tournament scoring systems, so for argument's sake, here's how it will all work today. A match is played in two twenty-minute halves (it seems that the info on the TPF site isn't 100% correct, so if we spot any obvious differences we'll point them out here -Ed), so that each team can play both as Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. The winner is determined by the number of rounds won, but in an attempt to keep things even, on DE maps the Terrorist wins will be counted (i.e. how many bombs planted or Counter-Terrorist teams wiped out), and on CS maps, the Counter-Terrorist wins will be counted (i.e. how many times all hostages are rescued or Terrorist teams wiped out). In the incident of a tie, two further 3-round halves will be played, and played until a winner is determined. The teams will consist of five players and reserves, although only five may play at any one time. And for the purists, bunnyhopping is banned. On pain of death, we might add. The usual formalities, such as obligatory player registration will apply, and the following maps will be used throughout the day:

De_dust

De_dust2

De_cbble

De_prodigy

De_nuke

De_train

Cs_Militia

Cs_Italy

Cs_Office

The rest of the rules are on display here. All sorts of restrictions are to be placed on custom weapon skins, player models and the like. Of course, TPF have the final say in all this, but hopefully things will go a little more smoothly today than they did a while back, when another Counter-Strike tournament degenerated into a farce as controversial config files were allowed in unchecked and widespread cheating was observed. Allegedly, of course. If you're coming down today, don't hesitate to pop you're head round the corner of the press pit and say hi. EuroGamer journalists will be distinguishable by an unwashed look, two day stubble and a grumpy "I've been up for hours" attitude. We do however respond quite warmly to free beer and other refreshment. Update - the big news so far is that top clan H&D have pulled out for undisclosed reasons, to be replaced at short notice by lesser known clan -Pro-. The games are about to kick off - EuroGamer's full report will be available here tomorrow lunchtime. On a related note, TPF have produced a fixture list for today's activities, which can be found here. Related Feature - Counter-Strike 1.1!