final and defeated the Azzurri 4-2 on penalty kicks after a 0-0 tie

The 2016 Hearthstone Championship Tour doesnt crown the winner until Nov. 5 at BlizzCon, but that doesnt mean Blizzard isnt already thinking about the next years tour. Blizzard announced several changes to the esports side of Hearthstone on Wednesday morning, focusing on prize pool, new events, scheduling and more.Increased prize poolThe 2016 HCT featured a $1 million total prize pool. For 2017, Blizzard is doubling the pot to $2 million. This will be split into $250,000 pots for each season championship and $1 million total to be distributed at the World Championship.While every professional wants to be thought of as the best of the world, pride cannot be exchanged for goods and service the way money can, and the more Blizzard invests in the prize pool, the more incentives players have to try to get their seats.Hearthstone Global GamesOverwatch wont be the only Blizzard game to get a World Cup-type event. To create a Hearthstone version, Blizzard is putting together the Hearthstone Global Games, a weekly league featuring teams of players representing individual countries.We havent seen a lot of team events in Hearthstone, but one of the best tournaments in Hearthstones existence was the Archon Team League, run throughout the summer of 2015. Hearthstone itself isnt a team game, but the Archon Team League demonstrated that with the proper format -- all classes had to be played and teammates figured out their best matchups -- you can bring a team concept to what is an individual game.Change of seasonal formatBlizzard is doing away with the regional championships for each season and instead going with a regional season playoffs. Now, each of the four Hearthstone regions (Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, China) will hold its own tournament at the end of each season in Swiss format and send the top four to the overall seasonal championship.Im a fan of this idea, simply because by keeping the regions isolated in this way, you cause a bit of Balkanization of the Hearthstone community. Different regions tend to have slightly different metas, especially when the meta is an unstable period after a content release. One example of this was during the Goblins versus Gnomes/Blackrock Mountain era in which the Chinese server had a notably different flavor of Priest decks -- yes, those existed at one point at high ladder ranks -- with Lightbomb adopted before the NA/EU regions started including it.Championship to be aligned with StandardOne first is that the next championship wont take place at BlizzCon, but in early 2018 at the end of the upcoming, as-yet-untitled Standard year (we are currently in the Year of the Kraken). The main reason for this is Blizzard wishes to align its content releases with the seasonal championships and the overall Standard year with one full championship tour.Blizzard wants to match the HCT calendar with new content such that each season is based on the same card pool all the way through. Doing it this way eliminates a significant inconsistency in some of the tournaments. For example, this year, the summer preliminaries came the same month as the One Night in Karazhan adventure, resulting in a weird situation where the card pool was different each week as new cards were implemented.More even distribution of both points and prizesA significant reality of Hearthstone compared to other esports is that theres always going to be a great deal more RNG (random number generation) than in a MOBA like League of Legends or an FPS like Counter-Strike. Its a high-variance esport like poker, and as such, a more level distribution of awards seems to be necessary for a healthy competitive scene. Tournament formats in which the competitors play 1,000 games to get healthy sample sizes to differentiate ability are impractical, so the next-best thing is to even out these awards. This rewards consistent players and encourages pros to stick with Hearthstone rather than have to chase high-risk, high-reward payouts.The exact distribution of points and jackpots has not been released, but Blizzards plan is to distribute both Hearthstone Competitive Points earned from tournaments and ranked play more evenly, starting with the November Ranked Play season. The same deal goes for Blizzard-run tournament jackpots. This will help prevent a situation like this years in which many of the Hearthstone pros found themselves so far behind in points that they were simply throwing in the towel by late summer.Hearthstone Inn-vitationalsId like to complain about the pun, but Ive made some quite awful ones myself, so I probably shouldnt throw any stones here. Blizzard is again taking a page from a successful alternative kind of tournament, the best examples in this case being the SeatStory cups or the Challengestones. The idea of an Inn-vitational is to create a fun, looser type of tournament for people to watch, with popular streamers, tournament winners and celebrities.Top streamers and players like Octavian Kripparrian Morosan, Jeffrey Trump Shih, Kacem Noxious Khilaji and Brian Kibler are important to the Hearthstone viewing audience, and its not because they win tourney after tourney. The idea here is to play with tournament formats and introduce personalities as well, to bring some variety to a game that sometimes needs it. Swell Water Bottle Wholesale . -- Ohio States Urban Meyer has never had any issue acclimating to the biggest stages in college football. Buy Swell Water Bottle Australia . Haas said he "felt a lot of pain" in his right shoulder when he slammed his racket to the ground in frustration after losing his serve at 3-3 in the first set. http://www.swellbottleaustralia.com/swell-bottle-brush-australia.html . He just needed to be his best twisting, turning acrobatic self. "I didnt need to be anybody else, I just needed to be myself and be aggressive," said Burks, who scored a career-high 34 points to spark the Utah Jazz to a 118-103 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night. Cheap Swell Bottles Australia . -- Team after team passed on Andre Ellington in the draft. Swell Water Bottle 17 Oz . How great will be revealed in the next couple of days at the board of governors meeting in Pebble Beach, Calif. FORTALEZA, Brazil -- The Confederations Cup has got the final nearly everyone wanted. The World Cup holder against the five-time world champion. The two-time European winners against the tournament host. Spains passing wizards vs. Brazils new star, Neymar. Spain came through an exhausting scoreless 120 minutes and then a penalty-kick shootout 7-6 over Italy in the semifinal Thursday and will face Brazil in Rio de Janeiros Maracana Stadium on Sunday to cap the World Cup warm-up tournament. "I think everybody was waiting for this Confederations Cup final to be Spain vs. Brazil," Spain captain Iker Casillas said. "I think the two teams that deserve to play the final are actually playing it." Jesus Navas scored the decisive penalty kick after a draining match made more difficult by heat and thick humidity. Nobody missed in the shootout until Italy defender Leonardo Bonucci shot over the bar to give Navas an attempt at the winner. The recently signed Manchester City midfielder coolly beat goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon to end a top-class battle and send Spain to another major final. While calling his squad "lucky" to win, Spain coach Vicente del Bosque was not about to concede the final due to fatigue -- even though Spain has one less day of rest than Brazil, which beat Uruguay 2-1 Wednesday. "We have to now consider what we have to do in the three days to recover. And we will definitely stand up to Brazil in the Maracana," the manager said. "The players should feel just as happy as kids playing in the Maracana. They have won a lot, but they want to win in the Maracana. Italys Emanuele Giaccherini hit a post in the 93rd minute and Buffon deflected Xavi Hernandezs kick off a post in the 115th. Those were the best chances in extra time, and then came 12 perfect penalties before Bonucci missed. "We were lucky in the penalty shootout," Del Bosque said. "It was a very difficult match for us. ... It was a marvelous team effort by both teams. It was a clean and sporting match that was played under very difficult climatic conditions.dddddddddddd" Spain, winner of the 2010 World Cup and the 2008 and 2012 European Championships, went second in the shootout. The 35-year-old Buffon and 32-year-old Casillas, among the worlds elite goalkeepers for more than a decade, exchanged handshakes with English referee Howard Webb before the shootout and then hugged each other. Antonio Candreva, Alberto Aquilani, Daniele De Rossi, Sebastian Giovinco, Andrea Pirlo and Riccardo Montolivo all converted their kicks for the Italians. Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos, Juan Mata and Sergio Busquets made their kicks for Spain. After Bonucci failed, Buffon dived to his right and Navas sent the kick past his outstretched arm. Spain beat Italy 4-0 in last years Euro final and defeated the Azzurri 4-2 on penalty kicks after a 0-0 tie in the 2008 Euro quarterfinals. "We played a great match. We created and we conceded, but we were always in the match," Italy coach Cesare Prandelli said. "Theyre still ahead of us, but were improving. "In these conditions, between absences and fatigue, its nearly impossible to go all the way, but the guys really moved me." Italy, missing injured Mario Balotelli, dominated the first half. Spain, without injured Cesc Fabregas and Roberto Soldado, settled down and bolstered by the second-half insertion of Navas and Mata, wound up with 54 per cent possession and a 19-13 advantage in shots. Italy will face Uruguay in the third-place match in Salvador, also Sunday. Before kickoff, about 5,000 anti-government protesters battled police about 1 mile from the stadium. These were the latest in a series of nationwide protests that have hit Brazil since June 17. Demonstrators, expected to turn out again Sunday, are angered about corruption and poor public services despite a heavy tax burden. Protesters also are denouncing the billions of dollars spent to host the World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio. ' ' '