The Hearthstone Masters Tour Las Vegas 2019 event begins today, Friday, June 14 and will run through the weekend. The event offers a massive prize pool for participating players, of which there are a lot of them. This is the premiere esports event of the year for North American Hearthstone players.

More than 250 players in total are at the live event this weekend and will be vying for their chance at a share of the huge prize pool of $500,000. This large sum of money that will be divided up for all of the players based on performance is due to the fact that this is the largest event in North America for the community.

The entire competition will take place over the next three days until Sunday, June 16. Throughout the three days, players will compete in various different match formats to keep things fresh and interesting. Players will have to be flexible and be able to play across multiple match types to progress.

Hearthstone Masters Tour Event Details

Today, day one, will feature the Swiss match format for the first seven rounds of the competition. For those who don’t know, the Swiss match style is for tournaments and doesn’t focus on elimination. It is fairly similar to the Round Robin format but with some tweaks

Swiss is a point-based match format where the players face off against others who have similar scores to them for seven rounds. At the same time, the tournament format ensures that players don’t go up against the same person more than once. The goal is to get as many points as possible in the seven rounds.

One day two, though, if a player has at least four wins, they will get the chance to go through five more rounds of the Swiss match format. From there, the tournament will determine who the top eight players are based on their scores. Those eight players will then participate in dual tournament rounds.

This will determine the placement of the top eight players within the competition and the prize pool will be divided among them and the rest of the competitors. The prize money wasn’t going to be that high initially but it’s thanks to the community that players will get the chance to earn a whole lot more cash.

Originally, the total prize pool was meant to be $250,000 but Blizzard started selling the Masters Bundle to offer players a chance to contribute to the competition and increase the prize pool as some of the money went to the esports scene.

Because of the valiant efforts of the community in purchasing the Masters Bundle this year, Blizzard decided to double the prize pool to now be $500,000 in total money available during the Hearthstone Masters Tour Las Vegas 2019.

Beyond the tournament format for the next three days, we also know how the matches will play out as well. Players will challenge one another in a best of three series. The player who is able to get the best two out of three matches will win that round against their opponent.

Players will start out with their primary card deck that they have chosen. After each of their games, they will have the chance to switch to their secondary or tertiary decks. These two decks can only differ from the primary deck by up to five cards.

So, while the decks will generally be pretty similar to one another, this does give each player the opportunity to have some slight but significant differences. This offers a bit of strategy in case a player finds themselves up against a deck that they are losing to.

While most matches will follow the best of three series, the finals will actually have a best of five series to close out the show. The more than 250 participants is large for the premiere competition this year like the Hearthstone Masters Tour Las Vegas 2019.

However, those hundreds of players were able to qualify for the tournament through various methods. The first is by doing well in the qualifier rounds that were held earlier this year in March and April through the online game itself. Besides this, all Hearthstone Grandmaster players automatically got into the Hearthstone Masters Tour Las Vegas 2019.

While this particular competition is aimed at North America, there are more competitions later this year that will focus on other regions of the world. There are still two more Masters Tours that will happen this year, one for Europe and another for Asia.

How to Watch Hearthstone Masters Tour

In addition, Blizzard is teasing that we will see even more Masters Tours events next year so here’s hoping that more regions will get the chance to host an event in 2020. In the meantime, if you’re interested in checking out the Hearthstone Masters Tour Las Vegas 2019, you can watch it live this weekend.

It will be streaming through the official Hearthstone Twitch channel all throughout the weekend. Be sure to sign in and allow for Twitch drops (free loot for just watching) so that you can receive some of the free card packs that Blizzard will be giving away throughout the event.