Watch The Starcraft UK Championships For No-Pennies

I'm about as much use as toenails on a strawberry in terms of discussing StarCraft II's popular, ladder-based multiplayer, so I'm sure you'll be hanging upon the golden wisdom of my every word as I bring you news that the UK SC2 championships are being held at BAFTA this weekend. To be honest I mostly clicked through because it said 'free tickets' and even though I now earn enough to have three square meals a week the f-word brings me running every time.

Orchestrated by the ESL, the championships involve 16 of the best qualifying players trying to outdo each other in the name of bagging $15k (first place geets $16k, then diminishing returns all the way down to a still-useful $250 for ranks 9 to 16) and a shot World Championship Series Europe Finals. It's billed as the "UK’s biggest ever professional StarCraft II event" though I can well imagine bigger still will follow over the years.

And yes, you can apply for free tickets to see the showdown in person, or it'll all be streamed on the internet if you can't get to London/don't think there's quite enough stagecraft in pro-gaming to warrant the trip.

More details on who's playing who and when, plus pictures of their very serious faces, are over here. It's 15 chaps and just one chapette, so I'm going to root for her on anti-patriarchal principle. Though I also like the guy who decided that stuffing his face with a pack of crisps made for a imposing profile pic.

The whole shebang starts at 12.00 on Saturday June 30th and is done and dusted by 7pm on Sunday July 1st. There is some sort of sleep happening at some point in the middle, fear not.