rest in peace, you were always a positive person, condolences to the family and relatives

update:
we have gathered enough funds to cover all our operational costs, thank to your generosity now we have 3768,12 PLN gathered
at this point if we manage to gather more i would like to:
- (optionally) buy LAN tshirts (as yes, we are going to have a LAN merch) for all staff members so at least they can get something out of it as everybody in the team work for free, that in estimation would cost around 1200 PLN
- get a money/keys prize pool so this event would be more prestigious while we already have the biggest gamers in
- we got a 100 TF2 keys donation from masuj which goes towards the prize pool, thank you!
- potentially gather some funds for the next event which will be in summer (non-tryhard edition #middiesrights)
after the event we plan to provide a full list of costs so you can see how does it cost to make an event like this
i would like to also estimate how much are we going to take overall to prepare everything we do timewise so you will see how time-consuming organizing this event can be but it's a hard topic
right now we are looking for sponsors so we can provide a prize pool, if you are interested contact me at staff@poland.tf or @suprovsky on Discord

for me it's been LANsilesia 2019 #summer and the moment we've presented all beers we got for mały
in general someone i think wonszu brought up an idea that we could do it as a some form of gratitude to mały as he's doing so much for our polish community and actually for entire EU, we knew he loves porter (black type of beer, usually Żywiec Porter) so we asked everybody who attended (~40 people) to go to local shops and buy a bottle or two for him

i remember he was quite dissapointed before we gave them to him because he couldn't buy any of his favourite beer nearby xD and he had no idea why at that time
we ended up getting 60+ beers and the way it was presented to him was this
https://i.imgur.com/ztcYRJC.jpg
i think it took him a few months to drink it all

finest warriors of tf2pickup.fi i see

edit: spectator tickets (50) are sold out

hey @everyone
here you can pay for the ticket
https://basestack.gg/lodz/hidden-events/poland-tf-zima-2024/
there are two forms, for teams and for spectators and you are interested in the second form
you fill up all fields in the forms and pay by card or BLIK (if u have a polish bank account) 10 PLN
then, when you're done, you open a support ticket on our discord https://discord.poland.tf and provide
a payment proof you will get on your email which looks like the screenshot below
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/940014013994115123/1187102050845212742/image.png
in the support ticket we will provide you an additional form you have to fill up and that's all

remember that we only have 50 seats available due to venue size limitations, so the system should lock up at 50 participants
good luck!

hey once again

qualification stage results
our qualification stage is concluded and the remaining teams who are going to Łódź to compete with the best TF2 teams in the world are:
- 3 Steps Back
- Bloking Hazard
- Potop Szwedzki (beaten POUNDLAN in a head-to-head fight)

event organization funding
we are still short on funds for the operational costs on LAN as we don't fully cover them, please help us covering the event organization at https://donate.poland.tf
as of now we have ~2760 PLN gathered and we expect costs to be 3500-3800 PLN now
we are going to present all costs publicly so we'll be transparent with you all
if you are interested in sponsoring this event please contact me on discord @suprovsky or send us an email at staff AT poland DOT tf (i'm writing the email in this weird way so we'll get less spam by bots)

post-qualification discussion about the event format
please all of you who will participate in the event as players join our discord https://discord.poland.tf, i will add you all access to player restricted channel so we can talk about what maps/configs/format are we going to use on the event, we plan to have a discussion concluded by a poll in which all participants will have an option to vote
i think we will hold a discussion for now and choose what path do we take after new year

spectator signups
we are going to open signups for spectators tommorow (20.12.2023) at 19:30 CET, I will post all details on discord and here
entrance costs 10 PLN and it includes a beverage of your choice, i don't know what are the choices now but i guess some soft drinks like monster energy, coca cola or sprite
payments are thru credit cards and BLIK (polish internal payment method)
there are 50 spots available, so make sure you get your ticket

hello

qualification stage format and schedule

the qualification stage is divided for two parts: main stage and the knockout stage
in any situation where something is undefined below ETF2L 6v6 Autumn 2023 season rules are applied

map pool

- cp_process_f12
- cp_snakewater_final1
- cp_sunshine
- cp_gullywash_f9
- koth_bagel_rc7
- cp_metalworks_f5
- koth_product_final
- cp_sultry_b8a
- cp_entropy_b5

main stage

4 groups with 4 teams each round robin, team who finish first get a LAN spot, second places advance to knockout stage, the rest teams get knocked out
all games must be played no later than tuesday 23:59 CET 12.12.2023 CET
you must agree on a date with your opponent, however if you cannot get an agreement you must play a match on a default date which is:
round 1: saturday 20:30 CET 9.12.2023
round 2: sunday 20:30 CET 10.12.2023
round 3: monday 20:30 CET 11.12.2023

all games are bo3 with pick/bans

knockout stage

it's one group with 4 teams, we do round robin again and top 3 teams get spots on the event
all games must be played no later than sunday 23:59 CET 17.12.2023 CET
you must agree on a date with your opponent, however if you cannot get an agreement you must play a match on a default date which is:
round 1: wednesday 20:30 CET 13.12.2023
round 2: thursday 20:30 CET 14.12.2023
round 3: friday 20:30 CET 15.12.2023

all games are bo3 with pick/bans

pick/bans

you do heavy fist fight, winner chooses side, then the order is as follows:

team A eliminates a map
team B eliminates a map
team B picks a map
team A picks a map
team A eliminates a map
team B eliminates a map
team B eliminates a map
team A eliminates a map
the remaining map is the decider map

reporting scores

reporting scores will be done by you through toornament, however you are asked to:
- record your demos for the entirety of the qualifications at all times
- have a status screenshot as a fallback option if there will be any problems with logs.tf
match scores are supposed to be reported up to 4 hours after the planned match start
when both teams agrees on a date, your team captain is supposed to put the match date in #poland-tf-match-dates channel on Team Fortress Polska Discord

seeds

these seeds which are on toornament right now are considered provisional, i think they are final; however you can fill up complaints until friday 19:00 CET 08.12.2023 and we'll consider them

payments etc later

if you advance to the main event, i will contact you regards payment for the entrance, you will have to fill a participation form (all players and spectators have to do it)
you will also be asked to choose seats in the venue on which your team will be placed
after we conclude the qualification stage, we will open signups for spectators

little reminder for naughty naughty players

all players cannot be banned/blaclisted on the ETF2L/RGL throughout the tournament for any reason except demo upload failure
in case of the main event, you cannot be banned 3 months back before the event happens, meaning if you get banned for anything except demo failure after 22.12.2023, you cannot participate in the event

hello everyone, got some news for you all

- signups for LAN qualifications end today 23:59 CET, so please make sure you sign up if you are interested in participating
- I think we'll have a schedule and format for qualifications ready tommorow **late evening** because we'll go thru this after work
- most likely we'll cast some of the qualification games on https://twitch.tv/essentialstf
- Garda Panteri is back in the invite for now because they actually have a roster to play, however /for fence will not participate, that leaves us 7 spots you can win throughout qualifications
- signups for spectators will be open after qualification stage, the participant cap is set to 50 spectators (due to venue size limitations)
you can find registration page as well as who is attending here: https://play.toornament.com/en_US/tournaments/7328877883772370944/
- we are not going to make a hot seat spots for teams - in comparison to tournaments where a platform makes it easy to switch like playstation/xbox/switch games where you just have to switch controllers and that's it, I believe it would be time-consuming (because someone has some super junky setting they want to have before playing and they will spend ages to get it), harder to schedule as we'd have to account all pauses for that
I think it could make a very bad impression onto the event as well as the venue and it's too much risk for us to do it
- we did out attempt to get our event medal in the game, however our request was declined by Valve, that leaves us only with physical medals and trophies, so don't worry, they will look great
- most importantly I informed the venue that they must be prepared well with alcohol because of what kind of tragedy happened in rcadia

hello once again

we definitely did not expect such interest from the community and because we want to make this competition as competitive as possible, after long discussion on the topic we have decided to change the signup format, so the following teams have a guaranteed spot in the LAN signups as invite teams:

MANDEM
TLR
wer das liest ist doof
Evil Gameing
Witness Gaming
tf2easy black
HAVOC
★★★½
Varmkorv Boogie

/for fence

that means that 9 out of 16 teams are reserved, we reserve a right to change this list in case of a team fold or NA/AU/NZ invite level teams being interested in participating
since some of the teams are lacking single players, we have decided to postpone the signups a bit and since that is the case already, we are going to to introduce PoLANd.tf 2024 #winter Qualifiers Stage to which all of the interested teams can signup
you can do so by creating a ticket on our discord https://discord.poland.tf and creating a ticket in #poland-tf-faq-en, providing the list of players who could participate
for the qualifiers we are going to use current ETF2L ruleset and map pool, which is:

- cp_process_f12
- cp_snakewater_final1
- cp_sunshine
- cp_gullywash_f9
- koth_bagel_rc7
- cp_metalworks_f5
- koth_product_final
- cp_sultry_b8a
- cp_entropy_b5

signups are open until 6th of December 23:59 CET and the Qualifiers Stage will take place 9-10.12.2023, all matches will be bo3/bo5 and the exact bracket will be published after signups close

due to a fact most likely we will rent PCs, we have raised the operation cost fundraiser cap to 3000 PLN
thanks to you we have already gathered around 2700 PLN already and if we overreach the fundraiser cap, we are planning to put any extra money gathered into the prize pool
if you are interested in helping out, you can do so at https://donate.poland.tf

it is not a typo
btw signups open tommorow 19:30 CET

yep exactly they host a signup/payment page, i'll just a share a link to it at the time mentioned above so all teams have equal chances of signing up
we have a separate form, because BaseStack will get info about the captain while we need to know about the whole team, also that was a part of our contract agreement with them

btw working discord link https://discord.gg/C3TWmwj https://discord.poland.tf

also if you need help travel let us know on Discord, we can support you (not financially) in buying travel tickets

first come first serve, so be sure to sign up as soon as possible
afaik there are 16-17 teams interested in joining the event

hello everyone

i have great news to share with you:
- i have signed up a contract with BaseStack for this event, so you can book your flights/sleeping spots!
- we are going to be able to cover 16 teams, not 15
however 9 gaming stations will be downstairs due to lack of space in the venue, they will be in an open space instead of a closed rooms and the desks will have more space than in the rooms
the venue has 95 PCs with 95 FHD 240 Hz screens and 1 FHD 144 Hz screen, meaning there will be one PC missing and we will have to rent the PC ourselves from some 3rd party or one of the participants can bring their own PC to fill the hole
- signups will open this Wednesday (29.11.2023) at 19:30 CET, i will post a signup page link on our Discord: https://discord.poland.tf
for spectators entry fee for the whole weekend is 10 PLN where one drink is provided within the fee
for players the only form of signup is the team signup, where one adult player fee is 300 PLN and 220 PLN for a minor, meaning in 99% of cases you will have to pay 1800 PLN for your team upfront (captain pays for all players in the team)
all participants must fill a form which you can get after creating a ticket on our Discord where you must provide a proof of payment towards BaseStack
signup order for teams matters, as we'll let choose teams where do they want to sit in the venue with the signup order

after we close signups, we will check what map pool and whitelist do you want for this event where all players will be able to vote
we will provide an event schedule soon
the whole event will be streamed on twitch.tv/essentialstf
thanks to Arie's support we are going to host LAN serveme, so it will be more convenient to reserve servers for your matches :)

i would like to thank you for all donations which will go for the event operational costs and potentially the prizepool, i really appreciate it and we hope that we'll make this event so great so it will be a great memory for you all
cheers :)

hello everyone, apologies for lack of update from my side
i wanted to update you whenever we have some meaningful stuff to present to you all and it seems to be a right moment now
we have the signup page ready and we are finalising things with BaseStack in order to get contract signed this week
there is an important change in terms of spectator attendance - it's going to be a paid entry for 10 PLN for the entire event and you will have a drink included in that fee (which is even less than one pint in weatherspoons on insomnia)
we are still lacking on funds required for covering the operational costs, donations on https://donate.poland.tf/ will be highly appreciated
also, the deadline for volunteer apps is november 25th, you can sent them here: https://volunteer.poland.tf/

we could make one as we have assets ready for tf2pickup.us but honestly i didn't try it again because we had it running once and it was an absolute fail due to lack of proper advertising probably, but this time i think it could be good as people know how the service works and that with proper moderation games can be really balanced