Hello! I am asking for assistance in holding ESL to a higher standard. ESL hosts tournaments for videogames across many platforms. Due to a lack of oversight and want for parity, many tournaments are won by professional players dominating the field.

One of the best examples of this Autochess. Autochess is across numerous platforms but the tournaments ESL hosts are Playstation 4 only and sponsored by SIE. You are required to create a Playstation Network account, download Autochess, and be a Playstation Plus subscriber. With little moderation and loopholes, this allows for one professional player to win week in and week out. Feels less like a tournament and more a payout to the top PC player in Autochess. Friends and I have tried contacting ESL with the hopes of better parity or alterations to the rules to make competition more viable. To be clear we aren't looking for anyone to be punished, but rather for the PS4 only players to have a chance of winning the PS4 tournament.

A run down of a typical tournament is such: First you sign up for the Weekly Qualifier. From there you wait till the check in time for the event. Once you check in you have to hope not to get matched in a group with one of the two high ranking professional players. When this happens many of the players quit. If you are fortunate enough to not get matched in their groups initially, then you may play for second or third place. This seems particularly nonsensical as the two players winning have no level, aesthetics, trophies, skins, or anything on their accounts. If I wasn't told it was another human player, I could have been tricked into believing it was AI instead. This is the storyline for every PS4 Autochess tournament. 

One friend, upon seeing they were in a group with this professional, quit the Monthly Final to go play in a Weekly Qualifier. Another friend was able to stay in the Monthly Final, lose, and then go into the Weekly Qualifier even though 5 rounds had passed. This effected the entirety of the point system as they were able to join and win that round even though not participating in any previous rounds. This hurt the 3rd place player as they may have had a chance had ESL not allowed for a player from another tournament to join midway.

This is just one tournament that is fairly new as Autochess hasn't been on Playstation that long. I can only imagine how many professional players are destroying casual players that have no idea. This assumption comes from playing in a PS4 only tournament, on PS4, sponsored by SIE, and not on other platforms. Autochess accounts can't be linked between PSN and any other platform. All this does is force these professionals to make PSN accounts with 1 game, Autochess, to win the weekly and monthly tournaments. 

We would like better oversight and clarity from ESL and SIE. If SIE informs us that the tournament will continue as is, so be it. We will stop attempting the tournaments, as many players have, and move on. The same professional player can collect their weekly check from SIE. However in the spirit of competition, parity, fair play, and respect we ask that SIE and ESL look into alternative tournament formats, structures or tiers of skill. Thank you very much for your time and reading this. Take care and be well!