Playing eSports Tournaments

Tournament Prerequisites

You must provide your own copy of Steam and the game Counter Strike 1.6 or Counter Strike Source.

You must Register your Steam ID before you play a tournament; you only have to Register your Steam ID one time. To learn how, watch the Steam ID Registration Screencast.

You must have sufficient funds in your Account Balance.

You must not already be in a tournament that is running.

Your account must be in good standing (i.e. your account must not be tied to any outstanding cheat accusations).

Recommended: Before registering for a tournament, log into the Steam account associated with your Get Gosu account and make sure that Steam and the game that you are about to play (i.e. Counter Strike Source) is up to date. Get Gosu has a No Show policy, and it would be unfortunate if you did not show up for your match on time because you were waiting on Steam or Counter Strike to update itself.

Basic Tournament Settings

Get Gosu offers two types of Tournament Structures: Sit and Go Tournaments and Scheduled Tournaments. The significant difference between these two tournaments is what triggers them to start. Sit and Go Tournaments start when, and only when, they are full, and Scheduled Tournaments start at their predefined start time.

To join a tournament you must pay a tournament Registration Fee. There are two Types of Registration Fees: Practice Play and Real Money. All Practice Play tournaments have a Registration Fee of $0.25. Practice Play tournaments, intended for use as scrims (scrimmages) or PUGs (pick up games), do not have monetary Prize Pools. Gamers are awarded one Exp point for each Practice Play Match won. Accumulate Exp points for bragging rights, to rank up, and to earn other bonuses and awards. Gamers are also awarded an Exp point for each Real Money Match won. Real Money tournaments have Registration Fees ranging from $1.00 + $0.25 to $10,000 + $1,000. Real Money tournaments have Prize Pools.

Currently, all money transacted at Get Gosu is ’Beta Money’ that has no cash value. When you open your Get Gosu account you receive $12,345,678.90 of Beta Money in your Account Balance. If you run out of Beta Money we will give you more. If your Account Balance is empty and we have not noticed it, let us know by filing a Support Ticket.

Registering for a Tournament

You do not need to be on a team to join a tournament; you can join a tournament solo or play with any combination of your teammates, your buddies, your clan mates, or random strangers. When you register for a tournament, the group of gamers that you play the tournament with is called a Participant. Clicking ‘Register Me’ on a tournament’s home page will add you to the tournament’s Pending List on a newly created participant. If you want to join an existing participant, look at the tournament’s Pending List and click the “Join this participant” link inside the participant that you want to join.

If your participant is on the Pending List, that means that your Participant is not full, i.e. you are registering for a tournament with Gamers per Participant of 5 and you only have 3 gamers on your Participant. If this is the case, you have to wait for more gamers to join your Participant; you can speed up the process by using the ‘Invite’ widget on the tournament’s home page to invite more gamers to join your participant. You can also use the ‘Invite’ widget to invite more gamers to the tournament itself, to help fill the tournament up faster. When your participant is full it will be moved over to the Participants list.

Only Participants on the Participant List actually play in the tournament; if a tournament starts while your partially full participant still sitting on the Pending List you will not be participating in the tournament and the tournament’s Registration Fee will automatically get returned to your Account Balance. Whether you are on the Participant List or the Pending List you can use the ‘Leave’ link to leave a tournament anytime before the tournament starts without penalty; if you click the ‘Leave’ link your Registration Fee will be returned to you in full. If you are on the Participant List when the tournament starts, you are locked-in to the tournament; you cannot leave a tournament once it has started.

Tournament Progression

When the tournament starts (Scheduled tournaments start at the designated start time and Sit and Go tournaments start when they are full) you will be given a link to your allocated match server. Get Gosu’s tournaments are designed to progress without delays, so if at least one member of your Participant is not connected to your allocated match server within 6 minutes of its allocation, your Participant is marked a No Show and automatically forfeits the match. Once you are in the game server you will see a countdown to the start of the match. If all gamers show up to the match early, the six minute countdown is shortened to 30 seconds, so that you do not have to wait to begin playing.

Once the countdown is complete the first half of the match begins. When the first half is complete sides are automatically swapped and there is a 30 second break before the second half begins. The second half is then played out in its entirety; even if you have won enough rounds to win the match, all rounds in the second half of the match are still played out because in some cases the losing participant may advance to the next Tournament Round.

If at any time during the first or second half of the match no members of your Participant are connected to the game server, your participant is marked Absent and automatically forfeits the match; the Absent feature stops a participant from getting a lead and then disconnecting from the game server to prevent their opponents from making a comeback. The criteria that determines whether your Participant has No Showed or gone Absent is whether or not at least one member of your Participant is connected to your match server, however, it is still possible to disrupt the flow of a tournament by one side being connected to the game server (thus not triggering the Absent or No Show rules), but not spawning their player model on the map. In Counter Strike, if both sides do not have player models spawned on the map, the match cannot be played properly and the match will not finish. The next Tournament Round will not start until all matches in the current Tournament Round are marked ‘finished,’ so a match not finishing could potentially spoil an entire tournament. We fix this exploit by automatically forcing a player to spawn their model on the map as soon as they connect to the game server. If, for any reason, your player model is found to not have spawned on the map, and instead of manually choosing your player model you are found to be connected to the gamer server without having spawned your player model on the map, and this disrupts the progression of a tournament, you will be banned from the site.

When the second half of the match is complete the game server shuts down, and you should exit from Counter Strike and return to Getgosu.com. If you like, you can check the tournaments Review Page to see the stats from your match. In the case of multi-round tournaments, the next Tournament Round starts when all matches in the previous Tournament Round are marked ‘finished.’ If your match finished quickly, you will have to wait while the other matches finish up. When all matches from the current Tournament Round are marked ‘finished,’ the next round will start; at this time you will either get a notification informing you that you have been eliminated from the tournament, or you will get a link to your next match. If you are advancing to the next Tournament Round, the same procedure as before applies; at least one member of your Participant must connect to your new match server within six minutes, or your entire Participant will be marked as a No Show. The match itself is played out the same way as described above (first half, sides swap, and second half). The process repeats until you are eliminated from the tournament or the tournament finishes.

General Tournament Rules

Round Time Limit is 1:45

Start Money is $800

The full Source Dedicated Server (SRCDS) configuration file (used for all Counter Strike Source matches) can be found here.

The full Half-Life Dedicated Server (HLDS) configuration file (used for all Counter Strike 1.6 matches) can be found here.

There is no knife round, sides are chosen randomly and then automatically swapped mid-match.

All rounds of a match are played because a. You paid for the server time, you should get to use it and b. in some cases losing participants may still advance to the next round of multi-round tournaments.

The winner of a match is the participant with the most Rounds Won in said match. The Rounds Won field for Counter Strike refers to Rounds Won in-game (not to be confused with the overarching Tournament Rounds).

Tournaments are designed to progress rapidly; there is no time for a playoff if there is a tie in the Rounds Won field. If there is a tie in the Rounds Won field, the winner of the match is determined by the Participant with the greatest aggregate score in the next-most match stat: Kills. If there is a tie in both the Rounds Won field and the Kills field, the tie is broken by comparing the next-most match stat: Deaths. If there is a tie in aggregate Deaths then aggregate Damage is compared, and so on as necessary. If by some miracle, Rounds Won, Kills, Deaths, Damage, Hits, Headshots, Tks, and Suicides are all tied, the Participant that registered for the tournament first is chosen as the winner.

Cheating

Cheating is not tolerated at GetGosu.com, cheaters will be dealt with harshly.

All Get Gosu SRCDS are VAC enabled and employ Zblock. VAC uses a delayed banning system, but Get Gosu is also able to ban confirmed cheaters before VAC does.

Get Gosu records .dem files for all matches played and a Get Gosu administrator will review any match upon request.

If you suspect that you are playing with or against a cheater, we recommend that you do not say anything about it during the match, do not tip the cheater off, let them keep cheating, the more evidence of them cheating that is captured the better. After you are eliminated from the tournament, go to the tournament’s review page, find the match that you think you were cheated in and fill out the Cheat Accusation Form for that match.