Richard Lewis’s No Majors Club returns for The Bot Major
No Majors ClubWith no Major to round off the 2020 CSGO esports calendar, Richard Lewis is bringing back the No Majors Club for a very special substitute – The Bot Major.
Starting on November 9 at 8AM PT / 11AM ET / 4PM GMT, Richard Lewis and his No Majors Club collective shall start broadcasting their latest project The Bot Major. Sponsored by CoolerMaster and Rivalry.com, the event aims to run a simulation of the Rio Major that was to take place on the same date until it was canceled due to safety concerns and global travel restrictions.
The matches will be streamed on Lewis’s Twitch channel, and the tournament will be organized as if it were the real teams playing – with some logistical adjustments.
The Bot Major livestream
While the format will not be identical, looking to run approximately eight days in length and with best-of-one matches in the early stages, Lewis hopes that the event will serve up something to fill the void as we wait for the normal LAN circuit to resume.
“The No Majors Club started as something fun we could do to offer the community a different type of way to watch the Counter-Strike major tournaments,” said Lewis. “When we’re not working events we are still watching them and generally talking among ourselves on Discord or whatever. Streaming it is a no brainer and lets fans of the game get insight from players and on-air talent that you might not hear on the main broadcast.”
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“We were obviously as saddened as everyone when we heard the Rio Major was canceled, especially given the circumstances. We wanted to ensure that there’d be something for the community to enjoy so we reasoned we’d run a tournament with bots simulating the matches live and broadcast that instead. It obviously can’t live up to the real thing but at a time when people feel like they’re watching the same matches over and over again, we wanted to do something different. It also needs to be acknowledged we’re not the first to do this but we’re hoping our event will be different from those others in the past.”
The premise of the event is to take the teams that would be most likely competing at the Rio Major having accumulated enough Major Ranking points, seed them accordingly, and then simulate the games. However, unlike the regular bots you might know from your match-making games, the simulations will use a config file that creates a playing identity for each player assigning them a ranking for aggression, reaction time, teamwork, 1st bullet aim, corrections, and spraying. These are tweaked for both the CT and T sides and bots are assigned loadouts based on real-life preferences.
“Obviously the games will be a shitshow and nothing like a quality game of CS but that should be part of the entertainment. We’ve also been working on some additional content to break up the games but for the most part, we’re hoping it’ll just be an opportunity for the community to let off some steam and get to hear some of their favorite voices in a relaxed environment,” Lewis added.
While the No Majors Club regularly features the likes of Vince “Vince” Hill, David “DAVEY” Stafford, Dust Mouret, Keith LaFortune, Erik “fl0m” Flom, Jack “Jacky” Peters, and show producer Sam Davies, broadcasts very often feature dozens of guests. A recent live stream on Lewis’s channel featured Matthew “Sadokist” Trivett who suggested he would make an appearance, which would be his first in anything related to Counter-Strike for some time. Other likely guests aren’t known at this time.
Disclosure: Richard Lewis currently works as Editor-At-Large at Dexerto.
