Nerd Street Gamers continues holding regional LAN competitions during the winter for a variety of esports games. Their most recent competitions have been for Valorant and League of Legends.

LAN competitions are held at Nerd Street venues spread across the US – predominantly in Pennsylvania and California. Their facility sizes range anywhere from 3,000 to 20,000 square feet. Besides Valorant and League of Legends, the Nerd Street tournaments cover many of the other top gaming titles including CS:GO, Halo, Super Smash Bros., and more. The tournament organizers recently provided an update to their Valorant Winter Championship series as follows:

Nerd Street’s Winter Championship open tournament series for VALORANT is well underway, with nine online open qualifiers now over. The top teams from across these qualifiers will compete in the VALORANT Winter Championship finals from Feb. 4 to 6 for a prize pool of $75,000.

Players on teams that have competed in these open qualifiers have earned points to place among the Nerd Street Winter Champs leaderboard. There are also regional LANs with larger prize pools in which teams can compete and earn points, such as the VALORANT Regional LAN in Philadelphia taking place Jan. 8-9 and the Denver Regional LAN taking place Jan. 22-23.

The top 16 teams on the leaderboard after the 16th open qualifier will move on to the finals. Another eight spots will be up for grabs at the Winter Champs Last Chance Qualifier taking place on Feb. 3.

So far, these are the top 16 teams on the leaderboard.

Akrew
Knights
Next-Gen
XSET
SoaR
Radiance
Pioneers
Renegades
Andbox
Version1
Soniqs
TSM FTX Academy
DarkZero
Ghost Gaming
Evil Geniuses
Cosmic Divide

Three teams to watch

Akrew

Akrew have been dominating the Winter Champs circuit of late. The team has won each of the last three online opens they have entered. They beat the Kansas City Pioneers in Open 9, SoaR at Open 8 and the Pittsburgh Knights at Open 6. The majority of Akrew were formerly part of EZ5, a team that disbanded in August and that lost in the Round of 16 at Nerd Street’s Summer Championship finals.

XSET

They’re the only team other than Akrew to have won any of the last four online opens. They won Open 7, the only competition they’ve entered so far. XSET have been one of the top teams in the North American VALORANT Champions Tour this year, and with the VCT 2022 season not resuming until late January, we might see this team compete in more Winter Champs qualifiers in order to secure a spot in the finals.

Knights

The Knights won Open 5 and have finished second at Opens 1 and 6. They have not competed in any qualifiers since Open 6, but look for them to enter a few more to solidify their spot in the Winter Champs finals.