Here at epic.TEN the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive group stages have finally come to a close, and the tournament will be moving in to the elimination phase later on tonight. For those that missed it or just want to find out what went on, here is a brief recap of how each of the groups panned out.

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Seeding a tournament like this is always tricky, especially when there are only four seeds to allocate to a cohort of quite evenly matched teams. As it stands, the match up began with TLR entering as an unseeded team, whilst the London Lynx had been given the fourth. With that in mind, the TLR team entered this game wishing to right what they considered to be a wrong, and prove that the seed was rightfully theirs. Though, as it happens, all this match served to prove was that the initial statement made was a correct one – the teams are very evenly matched.

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So 15th February saw the first epic at the new venue. We rocked up to Kettering Conference Centre on the Thursday before to be here first thing to get a full day on pre build. Knowing this was gonna be an event which was tight on build time due to it being a brand new venue we knew we would have much more to do  than we previously did at Uttoxeter.

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As with our previous events there is not just one first person shooter tournament to keep your eyes on, as we also have our Call of Duty 4 event being played throughout the course of the weekend. At the time of writing the Call of Duty tournament had a total of 13 teams signed up, with 9 of them having completed line-ups. This makes the tournament the most subscribed competition here at epic.TEN which means it's going to be packed full of potential and nail biting match ups.

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With the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament at epic.TEN just one day away from kick off, it is a good time to take a brief look at how the tournament is shaping up with regards to team sign-ups. In the past epic.LAN has played host to some great, intense competitions with no clear winner in sight until the last few rounds of the final, and the tenth iteration is looking to be no different. A lot of teams have expressed interest in the event and a number of them have begun signing up to the tournament ahead of Friday. Here is a short preview of some of the top contenders:

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Please help us to speed up the check-in process and keep the queues down by doing the following:

• Ensure any voucher codes have been allocated to the correct participant
• Select your seat 
• Print your barcode booking pass (yes it's fine to bring it on a phone/tablet device etc.)
• If you are in the CS:GO, Dota2 or COD4 tournaments, ensure that your team has signed up in full to the tournament system by 8pm Friday.

If you are planning on spectating the event, paying for a participant place on the door (if there are spaces remaining) or you have visitors coming to see you, please create a spectator booking on the system in advance, it's still fine to pay on the door, but will save time on the day.

Remember, the doors open at 4pm, if you arrive any earlier, we'll have to ask you to wait in the downstairs bar until we are ready for you.

On another note, please make sure you update your games before you attend to help us save bandwidth at the event.

See you in a tomorrow! And don't forget to go through our handy checklist while you're packing to make sure you don't forget anything!

Rounding up the sponsorship for epic.TEN is OverclockersUK, one of the UK's biggest PC component and peripheral retailers in the UK, with over 6000 products available through their online shop and retail counter in Staffordshire.

With a growing interest in the UK LAN gaming scene, the team will be sending along the following prizes for various competitions at epic.TEN, including the Call of Duty 4 tournament:

• 5x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case
• 5x BitFenix Recon Internet-Controlled Fan Controller (Black)
• 5x BitFenix Hydra Fan/LED Controller
• 2x Zowie AM Optical Gaming Mice
• 2x Zowie Swift Gaming Surface

So there you have it! A world of stuff to win this weekend at epic.TEN, make sure you're all booked up if you want to be in with a chance!

Mechanical keyboards are becoming an essential piece of hardware for anyone who takes their PC gaming seriously. CM Storm aims to offer gaming enthusiasts the ultimate gaming gear, and to help you along the way, they'll be sending over some of their fantastic mechanical keyboards with ultra durable CHERRY MX switches guaranteed to at least 50 million taps (I wouldn't like to be the one who counted that...).

Again for various fun and competitive tournaments at epic.TEN you could be in with the chance of winning:

• 5x CM Storm Quick Fire Pro Gaming Keyboards
• 5x CM Storm Quick Fire Rapid Gaming Keyboard

Next up in the epic.TEN prize lineup, it's your favourite blue gaming peripherals supplier, Roccat!

Supporting us for the second time at an epic.LAN event, the Roccat team has sent over some of their awesome gaming mice and accessories for various winners at epic.TEN, including

• 5 x Roccat Savu
• 5 x Roccat Lua
• 5 x Roccat Vire
• 5 x Roccat Sense Chrome Blue

Cheers to the Roccat team, and no Kaneth, they don't come in orange!

When we moved to Kettering Conference Centre, the plan was always to grow the events, and to give everyone a bigger and better LAN event.

In the last few minutes the participant numbers for epic.TEN have exceeded all of our previous events and we're still talking to a couple of teams about attending even at this late stage, wouldn't it be great to hit the nice round 300 mark?

We would like to thank everyone who has chosen to attend our next LAN party and for getting us to this stage, we're really excited about the weekend (albeit a little bit tired already!) and we look forward to seeing you all at Kettering on Friday.