Asia Minor viewer's guide

The Asia Minor Championship is the third official CS:GO Minor and is running from January 29 to February 1 at the Intel Extreme Masters stop in Taipei, Taiwan.

Aside from the usual $50,000 prize-pool, the Asia Minor is also interesting in that it offers two spots to the MLG Columbus Main Qualifier in February (as opposed to one spot like the other Minors) as well as the winner qualifying for the $250,000 Katowice IEM World Championship in March.

The format of the Asia Minor does not match that of the other Minor tournaments: eight teams will be fighting in a double elimination group stage (but all matches will be best-of-one) with the top two teams advancing to a single elimination, best-of-three playoffs.

Two teams were invited to the Asia Minor, while the remaining six had to qualify via various regional Asian qualifiers: South East Asia, India and Western Asia, Oceania, China, East Asia, and Taiwan.

The finalised group draw for the Asia Minor is:

Group A	Group B
CyberZen	Renegades
MVP.Karnal	TyLoo
Chiefs	TheMongolZ
Risky Gaming	Eat You Alive

As for a schedule for the whole event, such an itinerary can be found below:

Friday, January 29:
03:30	CyberZen	vs.	Risky Gaming
05:00	MVP.Karnal	vs.	Chiefs
06:30	Winners' match
07:30	Elimination match
09:00	Decider match
Saturday, January 30:
03:30	Renegades	vs.	Eat You Alive
05:00	TheMongolZ	vs.	TyLoo
06:30	Winners' match
07:30	Elimination match
09:00	Decider match
Sunday, January 31
03:30	Semi-final #1
07:00	Semi-final #2
Monday, February 1
03:30	Grand final

Quite a few famous faces have been flown out to Taipei to help take viewers through the event, whether that be via commentary or analysis, and these personalities can be found below in the talent list:

Daniel "⁠ddk⁠" Kapadia - Desk Host

 Anders Blume - Caster
 Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat - Caster
 Lauren "Pansy" Scott - Caster
 Jason "⁠moses⁠" O'Toole - Caster

 Halvor "⁠vENdetta⁠" Gulestøl - Analyst
 Sudhen "Bleh" Wahengbam - Analyst

Finally, the prize-pool breakdown for the event matches that of other Minors, with a few tweaks:

1. - $30,000 + Qualification for MLG Columbus Major offline qualifier + Qualification for IEM Katowice
2. - $15,000 +  Qualification for MLG Columbus Major offline qualifier
3-4. - $2,500
3-4. - $2,500

We also have a light preview for the event which goes over each team's lineup and past performances and you can find this here.

Action at the Asia Minor at IEM Taipei will get underway in a few hours' time as CyberZen of China will take on Risky Gaming of the UAE at 03:30 . The games will be streamed in English over at ESL's CS:GO channel.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter