So, you play CS:GO competitively and want to try your luck against some of the best players and teams in the world? Well, open qualifiers are the first step in doing that. The first and arguably the hardest and most unpredictable… and this statement has been said by several professional players. But hey, they’ve been there already, right?

Although open qualifiers are the way for any upcoming professional CS:GO player, they can sometimes be hard to come by if you don’t know where to look for them. This is exactly the reason why I’m writing this article, to help you know where to get that information and how to participate in them.

What Is An Open Qualifier?

If you’re already familiar with the term or how they work, I suggest you skip this part of the article.

Open Qualifiers are free tournaments that qualify for another one or, at least, for a different stage of that one. They are the first step in reaching some of those incredible tournaments you see on Twitch, where countless teams are fighting for four, two or sometimes even just one spot.

Generally, after the open qualifier comes the closed qualifier, but that’s a whole other story, as going through an open qualifier can be really tough. The good part about getting into a team that can go through several open qualifiers is that you probably won’t have to go through them to all tournaments because you might get directly invited to the next stage.

Open qualifiers are typically played in a single-elimination Best-of-One format, with the latter stages transitioning to Best-of-Three most of the time. To be sure, you’ll have to check the rules of each open qualifier, which are generally available on its webpage.

The thing about open qualifiers is that they’re really unpredictable. You might get matched against a professional team in the first round, especially when they’re elo-based. Let’s say you’re playing the Open Qualifier on FACEIT and your team has a level of 7. You’ll most likely get matched against a level 10 team in the first round due to how seeding works - which makes sense, after all, we all want the best teams to proceed to the tournament.

How to Find Open Qualifiers

Now that we know what they are, here’s the most important part of the article - how to actually find them. Open qualifiers for most big tournaments are announced 1-2 weeks prior to their start, with most being played during the week at the end of the workday (around 6 pm CEST). The best way to look for them is to refer to the Liquipedia list which is updated regularly by the community. Notice that it is split into the four different year quarters, as generally, the list gets really big as it comprises most qualifiers from around the world. Before applying to any of them, you need to make sure you can actually do it - all of them have some ruling applied, like the countries allowed to participate. You’ll get kicked from them if you don’t abide by the rules, and there were situations in the past where they had to disqualify victors of said qualifiers due to not checking out the rules before playing.

This all seems really complicated, but it really gets easier the more you play, because they generally follow the same guidelines.

You can also be the first to know about upcoming open qualifiers if you follow the tournament organizer on social media, as that’s generally the first place they’ll update after scheduling and creating the page tournament. Here are a few ones you can follow:

ESL
DreamHack
FLASHPOINT
BLAST

Open qualifiers generally have a limit on the number of teams that can sign up, so don’t leave it hanging.

REMEMBER TO CHECK IN! I can’t stress this enough, so many teams (even professionals) just get thrown out of the qualifier before because they missed the check-in window. You generally can sign up for open qualifiers a few days or weeks prior to its start, but you’ll need to confirm your participation on the day it’s starting. Check-in generally starts an hour before the tournament starts and you’ll just need to go to its page and confirm you’re there to participate, it’s that simple - it really is just a click of a button.

How to Participate in Open Qualifiers

This will probably be the most confusing part of the article, but it’s really not hard at all. Most big qualifiers are done either on FACEIT or ESEA - both platforms are fully ready to host open qualifiers, with several tools to make things easier for both players and tournament organizers. Not only that, but they also have their own in-house anti-cheat, to make sure everything is running smoothly and out of… undesirable problems.

First, you’ll need to be registered on the platform and have your Steam connected to your account. If you already play on either of them, you’ll most likely have this done already. After that, make sure you have your team created.

On FACEIT - You can create a team and then use it when signing up for the qualifier. You can also just go with the party you have at the moment. The signup process is really easy to follow and understand.

On ESEA - even if you participate in the seasonal tournaments hosted by ESEA, you’ll need to create a new team on the qualifier’s page. It’s a totally different process compared to FACEIT, but it’s not hard. Just make sure to have all your teammates added as friends to make the process easier.

After that, you’ll just need to be ready to start at the given time to know who you’re facing up against in the first round. Both platforms will make it really easy to see that. On FACEIT, you’ll do the map veto on the platform, and only after that, the server IP will be given to you. On ESEA, you’ll do the map veto through bot chat options inside the server. Again, everything is explained to you during the process, so it’s almost impossible to miss those.

There are also some qualifiers that are hosted on different websites, and all of those have their own different process of signing up and playing. But don’t worry, as they’re generally all very similar to each other. Just think about it - there was no point in making it complicated, as they’ll lose many players otherwise.

If you happen to get a bye win in the first round, you’ll have to wait until your opponents end their match of the previous round. It will happen a lot, especially if you’re on a higher leveled team. You’ll need to make sure you’re watching out for the end of that match, as the platforms have a time limit for both teams to join the server. If you happen to get distracted and miss out on the match, you’ll get disqualified and the opposing team will advance to the next round automatically. Playing an open qualifier is a commitment and you better be ready for long grinds if you’re able to stay alive until the final rounds. That’s why the bigger tournaments have open qualifiers that span across two days, with the Bo1 rounds being played on the first one and the Bo3 on the second.

I’m going to say again - it might look really complicated to play an open qualifier, but trust me, it is not! They’re almost all the same after you can used to how they work. Also, be ready for a lot of grinding and frustrating matches - in a Bo1, it’s not the best team that wins all the time. Also, be prepared to face very tactical opponents as well as others that seem that they just want to run freely through the server, and generally those are the most frustrating to play against. Trust me, I’m talking out of the experience I have from playing qualifiers in the recent past.

Thank you for reading this article! You can reach out to me for feedback or suggestions via Twitter.