Virtual Athletes take centre stage

While away the hours addicted to Playstation2? Can't get off your Xbox - you and half of Britain. Gaming has overtaken every form of entertainment from music, film and TV to become the nation’s biggest pastime. And this weekend you could win a small fortune for your talents...

The hunt for the nation's top gamers is taking place at the UK's biggest ever computer games tournament, the Samsung UK World Cyber Games, where thousands of Londoners will be competing at the very highest level.

The winners of the tournament not only stand to win a portion of £30,000 of prize money, they will officially become England’s top gamers and go forward to represent the country at the World Cyber Games in Seoul later this year.

Chosen from more than 10,000 hopefuls and selected through regional qualifiers and online registration, the team will compete against 54 other nations in October and win a share of prize money totalling US $400, 000.

Registration is still open and contenders can go to http://uk.worldcybergames.org to book their place for the UK finals at the Shepherds Bush Pavilion in early September.

The competitive disciplines for this year's tournament are:

Sujoy Roy, of UK organiser iGames UK said: "This is the fourth consecutive year of running the UK leg of the World Cyber Games, and it's getting bigger and better each time. The World Cyber Games are fast becoming the Olympics for the gamer generation."