The best pro gaming to watch this weekend

It's another great weekend of competitive electronic gaming in store, with a World Championship, a Major qualifier, and a community-supported LAN event happening.

It's another great weekend of competitive electronic gaming in store, with a World Championship, a Major qualifier, and a community-supported LAN event happening. It's the biggest event of the year for Smite, with it's World Championship running from Thursday through to the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, over in the Dotaverse there's the Shanghai Major qualifiers to enjoy. Finally, there's one of the cooler events in a while, the Heroes of the Storm 'Heroes Rising' tournament is a crowdfunded LAN event taking place in LA this weekend. Read on to see how you can tune in live:

Smite: World Championship 2016

If you're goal is to watch the highest level of play possible this weekend, regardless of the game, Smite is what you'll want to watch. The biggest event of the year for Hi-Rez's action-MOBA, this is the winner-take-all, final showdown between the best teams in the world. The World Championship started yesterday and runs through January 10th. You can watch on the official Twitch channel here, and games go from 8am-8pm PT most days—you can find the full schedule here. Catch up with what happened on day 1 here, and our very own Chris Thursten is at the event live and ready to fill you in as the weekend continues.

Dota 2: Shanghai Major Main Qualifiers

Although the Dota 2 Shanghai Major isn't until the beginning of March, qualifiers started on Thursday and and continue through the weekend—with the playoff bracket starting Saturday. There was an open qualifier earlier this week, but the main qualifier is split into four regions, with the top two teams from each region qualifying for the Shanghai Major. Games begin at 10am PT on Friday, and 2:30pm PT Saturday and Sunday, and you can watch live on the BeyondTheSummit Twitch channel here.

Heroes of the Storm: Heroes Rising

Heroes Rising is a LAN tournament held in LA with both invited and qualifying teams, but the coolest part of this event is that it was crowdfunded by Esports Arena, raising over $8k on Kickstarter—70% of which went straight into the prize pool. It begins today at 4pm PT with a series of showmatches (one of the Kickstarter stretch goals) and then continue from 11am-10pm PT on Saturday and 11am-8pm PT on Sunday. You can watch on the main Twitch channel here—another stretch goal added a second stream with alternate games here, and can take a look at the bracket here.

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