Today marks the beginning and the end of the first ever Team Fortress 2 tournament at the annual InfoShow event in Kaunas, Lithuania. Over the last twelve years this student-run LAN event has had a strong turnout for its gaming competitions which originally focused on the Counter-Strike series, but have expanded to include more games in recent years including DOTA2 and now TF2.

Forget your EMSs and WCSs; this is grassroots eSports in action. Friends coming together from far and wide to blow the shit out of each other and then get up and shake hands and laugh about it afterwards. It’s not all bromance and backslapping though; to make things interesting and tap that competitive spirit there are of course prizes on the line here.

On top of the 670 LTL prize pot generated by registration fees, the much loved HiperZ.com have stepped up to provide private servers as prizes for the top three podium finishes -- 3 months, 2 months and 1 month from gold to bronze. Our overlords at VALVE Software have also sent over a sack of swag from Seattle full of Team Fortress 2 Merchandise.

"VALVE Merch? That’s cool, but I can’t wear it in game." You say to yourself. Well fear not because an exquisite medal has been added to the game to commemorate the event, created by nabique and brd, and exclusive to those participating in the event. Yeah, now you jelly.

The tournament will take the format of an eight team double elimination, with each round being a best-of-three maps from the current ETF2L map pool (excluding Metalworks). So as you might imagine this will be an all-day event, scheduled to start around 11:00CEST and finish late in the evening. However, LAN is an unpredictable beast -- expect delays.

TeamFortress.TV will be streaming matches from the event from beginning to end with Admirable, Mirelin and Ducky. Our friends at Comp.tf, the competitive TF2 wiki, are also tracking the event, so bookmark that wiki entry as your tournament companion.