ASUS Final Battle of the Year 2012 will kick off on Thursday with twelve teams vying a piece of the $15,000 prize purse and the title of one of the very last Counter-Strike 1.6 tournaments.

Although both Natus Vincere and ESC Gaming had to drop out of the tournament, the likes of Virtus.pro, paistit, KerchNET and Eduard "ED1K" Ivanov's mixteam Place2Play.ru promise an interesting tournament.

aslak will be on show in Kiev next weekend 

The twelve participants have been divided into two groups of six teams to be played out over Thursday and Friday, with the winners advancing to semi-finals and the second and third place finishers to quarter-finals.

Group A	Group B
KerchNET	Virtus.pro
Place2Play.ru	Selectah!
zNation	paistit
prestij	Doockers
espada	Independent
es4x	OverPro ELTZ

Quarter-finals and semi-finals will take place on Saturday at CyberSports ARENA in Kiev, while Sunday is reserved for the grand final and third place decider of the event, which has the following prize distribution:

1. $6,000
2. $3,000
3. $2,500
4. $2,000
5-6. $750
5-6. $750

HLTV.org will be covering ASUS Final Battle of the Year 2012 with hot matches and updates from the event, although proper on-site coverage won't be possible due to NorthCon taking place in Germany at the same time.