Hearthstone World Championship prize pool will be enough to buy all the decks and then some

Hearthstone World Championship

Gosh, it’s a competitive world out there. We’ve got the Dota 2 International qualifiers going on right now, and soon the Hearthstone World Championship American Qualifier Tournament will be kicking off, with warriors, mages, paladins and the rest all duking it out for a spot in the finals at BlizzCon later this year. It’s all very stressful. 

Blizzard has just announced the prize pool for the championship, which amounts to $250,000. That’s rather a lot of money, even if it’s not quite as gigantic as some esports pools. The winner of the competition will receive $100,000 of it. That’s enough money to buy a lot of decks. 

So, how do you get in with a chance to get your mitts on all of that loot? Well, you’ve got to get into the qualifier first. And you’ve got until August to get good enough for that. Here’s what you’ve got to do:

  • Be a top 16 Legend player from Ranked Play in April, May, June, July, or August.
  • Top players from select community tournaments between April and August will be invited to participate in the Americas Qualifier Tournament. We will highlight those tournaments as well as how many qualifier spots are available in that tournament.
  • A Last Call Tournament will be held before the Americas Qualifier Tournament to determine any remaining qualifier spots, up to 130 participants. Players must be a resident of the countries noted below and must have achieved Legend rank on the Americas Ranked Play ladder at least one time between April and August. Players residing in these countries are eligible to participate in the Last Call Tournament for the Americas region: United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Chile.
  • Players cannot compete in multiple Qualifier Tournaments. If a player qualifies for multiple, they must choose one to compete in.

The qualifier tournament will have 130 players and will be split into two phases. All players will be matched against each other based on their cumulative places in the Americas Ranked Play Rankings from April to August. The two best players will immediately advance to phase two.

All matches will be best of fives, with each players bringing three decks, and the defeated player switching decks for the next game. That’s also how we’ve been playing in our PCGN office tournament. It’s almost as if we’ve been preparing for this moment…

Here’s what to expect from phase one:

  • Players will be matched against each other in a Swiss format based on their initial seeding.
  • If a player loses three matches (not games) in Phase 1, that player will be eliminated from the tournament.
  • If a player ends a round of the Swiss format tournament with a +5 match record, that player will advance to Phase 2. (Match records are determined as Wins minus Losses. 5-0, 6-1, or 7-2 records are all considered +5 match records.)

And for the final qualifying round, or phase two:

  • In Phase 2 of the tournament, only 16 players will remain from the initial 130 participants.
  • Players will be randomly seeded into four tournament groups of four.
  • The top two players from each group are placed in an eight-player single elimination bracket.
  • The top four players will advance to the Hearthstone World Championships at BlizzCon 2014!

There will also be European and Taiwanese qualifiers.