The Indian eSports Championship (IESC) 2016 - Dota2 and CS GO

Shounak Sengupta

8o, Sep, 2016

The IeSC 2016 began earlier this month featuring both CS:GO and Dota 2. The tournament boasts a whopping prize pool of INR 20,00,000 and will be held over the course of September, October and November 2016. The tournament is being held in 4 phases and the structure and format is quite unique.
IeSC is brought to you by the good people over at Neon Gaming Studio and Essence Transmedia and features both online and offline stages in various phases of the competition. The finals will be held in Mumbai and will feature CS 1.6 as well as a cosplay mini event.

Café Warz

This is a tournament featuring café owners in and around Mumbai who will be fielding one team each in a bid to trump the others. The café industry has been a backbone to the Indian gaming scene and with this initiative the organizers hope to reward some of the guys who have been promoting gaming and esports as a whole for quite a while now. This stage is now over with only the LAN finals left to be played out in November.
Note: Participation for Cafe Warz is only open to Café owners.

The Uprising

The Uprising is a purely online phase of the IeSC set to begin on the 15^th of September. The entire brackets will be played out over 6 days and will follow a bo1 format right up till the semi finals. The 1^st and second placed teams in both Dota 2 and CS:GO will also be receiving a cash prize of INR 30,000 and INR 20,000 respectively. Additonally, the 4 teams that make it till the semi finals also get to move on to the League stage - the Proving Grounds, where they will start with a 2 point advantage. The registrations are open till the 12^th of September, while the matches begin from 15^th.

Registrations : till 12^th September.

Click HERE to register for Dota2
Click HERE to register for CS GO

Dates : 15^th-20^th September

The Proving Grounds [Part 1: Online Knockouts]

The next phase of the competition is called Proving Grounds and will be divided into 2 parts. The first part consists of a 3 day online knockout phase where teams will battle it out for 60 spots in the next phase.

Registrations : 21-25^th September

Dates : 27^th -29^th September

The Proving Grounds [Part 2: League Stage]

The 60 teams from the previous stage will be joined by the 4 from the Uprising to make a total of 64 teams. These 64 teams will then be split into 4 groups of 16 teams each and the format will be a league system. The top 2 from each group, that is a total of 8 teams, will advance to the next round.

Qualification : 60 teams from Proving Grounds Online Knockouts

Dates : 1^st-30^th October

Ground Zero

The entire event will culminate down to the final phase which will be a 3 day LAN called Ground Zero to be held in Mumbai. Ground Zero will also include other festivities like a cosplay competition and entertainment activities for players, fans and attendees alike.

Qualification : From Proving Grounds League Phase

Dates : 10^th-12^th November

Prize pool :

1^st - 350,000 INR
2^nd- 150,000 INR
3^rd/4^th- 75,000 INR
5^th to 8^th- 50,000 INR

The format and nature of the IeSC looks to be pretty comprehensive and well designed. Teams making it to the group stages of the Proving Grounds will have the opportunity to play and learn with the best teams in India and the long drawn out stage will mean that every team will have the chance to improve and try out new and different strategies.

For more information visit the IeSC website.