Good news comes for all lovers of eSports and of course Hearthstone. Blizzard, after the revelation of the three levels of the Hearthstone Masters program last month, has today Hearthstone Grandmasters start date announced, a competition in which the best Hearthstone players in the world will compete.
Hearthstone Grandmasters will kick off on May 17, 2019 and will feature three regions: the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific., with 16 players each for a total of 48 participants. Each region will be randomly divided into two divisions of eight players each. Players from each region will face off in a double that will be played in the best of three Specialist format. At the end of all matches, players will get a rank within their divisions based on the number of wins achieved. The divisions will be revealed at the HCT 2019 World Championship in Taipei on April 28 before the Grand Finals.
Players will be invited to join Hearthstone Grandmasters in their inaugural year by Blizzard Entertainment based on criteria such as total career earnings, points earned during HCT 2018, who earned the most points during the season, community contribution Hearthstone and more. Hearthstone Grandmasters will earn cash prizes commensurate with their performance throughout the season and will automatically qualify for all Hearthstone Masters Tour events. We will reveal initial Grandmasters rosters for each region in the coming weeks.
The top three players from each division at the end of each season will compete in the Grandmasters Seasonal Playoff, in which six players will clash. The finalists from each region from both seasons of 2019 will join the two players from the China Gold Series to form a total of eight players who will battle for a $ 500.000 prize pool in the Hearthstone Global Finals at the end of the year.
Following the conclusion of Hearthstone Grandmasters Season 2, players who finish last in their respective divisions will be at risk of relegation. Players who have earned the largest share of the Masters Tour program prize pool in each region will be able to receive an invitation to replace the bottom-ranked Grandmasters for the 2020 season.
There will be a total of two Hearthstone Grandmasters seasons in 2019, each taking place over eight weeks of online match broadcast live on Twitch.tv/PlayHearthstone. Five matches will be broadcast every Friday, five more on Saturdays and finally six on Sunday.
