Starcraft 2 WCS Winter Finals: All Systems Go For This Weekend

Matches for the Starcraft II World Championship Series Winter Finals are all set for this weekend. The tournament marks the end of seven qualifiers and six group stages. A total prize pool of $120,000 is at stake, along with those all-too-important WCS points.

The WCS points are important, as they determine who gets to be part of 2019 StarCraft II World Championship Series. Last year, the championship was won by Finland's Joona "Serral" Sotala, beating South Korea's Kim "Stats" Dae Yeob 4-2.

The WCS Winter: Americas competition is scheduled for Saturday, April 6 at 11 a.m. EDT. Playing in this tournament is:

- Max “Astrea” Angel

- Pablo “Cham” Blanco

- Maru “MaSa” Kim

- Li “TIME” Peinan

- Alex “Neeb” Sunderhaft

- Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn

The WCS Winter: Europe tournament takes place on Sunday, April 7, and begins at 11 a.m. EDT. Taking part in this competition is:

- Mikolaj “Elazer” Ogonowski

- Julian “Lambo” Brosig

- Théo “PtitDrogo” Freydière

- Joona “Serral” Sotala

- Gabriel “HeRoMaRinE” Segat

- Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti

Both tournaments follow a king-of-the-hill format. That is, the 5th seed and the 6th seed go head-to-head with the winner moving on to go against the 4th seed, and so on until the finals. Matches are best-of five, with the exception of the finals. This match is a best-of seven series.

For the Americas, the tournament begins with a match between Astrea and Cham while Europe has Elazer going against Lambo.

The WCS can be viewed on the official Starcraft Twitch channel. The stream is hosted by Jessica “ZombieGrub” Chernega, Nathan “Nathanias” Fabrikant, Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson and Ravi “feardragon” Pareek.

The matches are available is eight other languages courtesy of community partners:

- German: TakeTV

- Polish: emStudio, ESL Poland, IndyStarCraft

- French: O’Gaming

- Russian: StarLadder, Psinsin

- Spanish: HorussTV

- Portuguese: DeathzoneTV

- Italian: QLash

- Mandarin (TW): ALGS

- Mandarin (CN): SCboy

The WCS is not without its controversy, as back in January Blizzard disqualified players Huang "Cyan" Min, Hu "Jieshi" Jiajun, Huang "Nice" Yu Xiang, and Meng "Route" Qi, from the WCS Winter 2019. The four players are banned as well from competing in any Blizzard esports competition until May 31 of this year.

According to the ruling, during the ladder race of the Americas leg, suspicious matches were detected among the four players. Upon review it was discovered that a number of matches were intentionally lost by Route to the others. Overall, it was found out that the players were colluding, which is prohibited under the rules. The disqualification resulted in Astrea, MaSa, and Erik “Erik” Braga Bermelho being able to take part in the tournament.