Announcing: Kung Fu Cup 2015 Season 1

The broadcasting powerhouse of the Chinese Starcraft community, The Starcraft Boys (SCboys) are proud to announce Kung Fu Cup 2015, a series of international online tournament, featuring 21k$ in prize pool and global qualifiers. 

Format

32 man GSL/WCS style tournament, with two dual tournament group stages and a single elimination bracket. Note: all games will be played on Korean server.

Players

The top 3 of Kung Fu Cup 2014 #1, Parting, Sen and Jaedong, will join 29 other players from the global qualifiers. Qualifier spot breakdown is as follows:

6 from North and Latin America 6 from Europe, Middle-East and Africa 6 from South Korea 3 from Taiwan and Southeast Asia 8 from China (ran separately by the scboys)

All qualifiers are 256 man open bracket, top 3 qualify to the main tournament. To sign up, you need to be a citizen of the qualifier region you want to compete in, i.e. to compete in America Qualifier you must be a citizen of a North American or Latin American country, residency and/or work visas are not eligible.

Korea Qualifier #1: Saturday, Feb 28 12:00pm CET (GMT+01:00)  Sign Up Korea Qualifier #2: Sunday, Mar 01 12:00pm CET (GMT+01:00) Sign Up America Qualifier #1: Friday, Feb 26 6:00PM PST 2:00am UTC (GMT+00:00) Sign Up America Qualifier #2: Sunday, Mar 07 6:00PM PST 2:00am UTC (GMT+00:00) Sign Up Europe Qualifier #1: Wednesday, Feb 25 6:00PM CET 5:00pm UTC (GMT+00:00) Sign Up Europe Qualifier #2: Monday, Mar 02 6:00PM CET 5:00pm UTC (GMT+00:00) Sign Up Taiwan/Southeast Asia Qualifier: Monday, Mar 09 12:00pm CET (GMT+01:00) Sign Up

Sign-up links will be updated when they are available. Actual start times are subject to change.

Why citizenship based?

Since its intitial inception, Kung Fu Cup has always been about competition between nations within the Starcraft II community. In the weekly showmatch days it was about China vs Korea, last year we had an invitational based on Korea, China and foreign country competition, we hope to retain this format and spirit, as that is what defines our tournament.

Prize

1st place: 40,000 CNY (6,404$) 2nd place: 20,000 CNY (3,202$) 3rd and 4th: 10,000 CNY (1,601$) 5th - 8th: 5,000 CNY (800$) 9th - 16th: 2,000 CNY (320$) 17th - 32th: 1,000 CNY (160$)

Overall: 132,000 CNY (21,135$)

Where do all your money come from?

We understand that given the recent events involving shady Korean betters and gambling organizations, tournament funding has become a sensitive matter, thus we decided to disclose the sources of our prize pool money and their identity.

The prize pool of Kung Fu Cup comes from the following sources: Douyutv sponsorship, China's biggest video game streaming platform, which the Chinese cast will be streamed on; ele.me sponsorship, a Chinese food delivery service; Streaming revenue from the scboy douyutv channel.

We are also in talk with other sponsors, primarily Chinese progaming gear manufacturers, but we can ensure that no foreign sources are involved.

Streams

Chinese SCboys English eSports Heaven

Casters:

Chinese: SCboys aka xiaoseforever, F91 and ms_joy English: Alexander "Zeweig" Lind and Lucas "Tenshi" Collard

We currently do not accept alternate language stream (observing and casting) requests but restreaming in your language is welcomed.

Written with Hao 'Digmouse' Wu