ESL Pro League S8: on the eve of the tournament

CS2 / News / 1 December 2018 — 22:00

The tournament preview

From December 4 to 9, the first major CS:GO tournament — ESL Pro League S8 — will be held. NAVI.GG.BET will be joining the fight on Tuesday, so let's take a look at what we can expect from it.

The ESL Pro League S8 LAN Finals were preceded by the online part of the season, where teams competed with each other for 7 slots into the final stage of the tournament. Natus Vincere successfully completed that stage, having shown its best all-time result in the league (second place, 18 wins and 8 losses, 54 points). Only the Astralis managed to get ahead of the Born to Win, as they completed the online part with 62 points.

In addition, Natus Vincere players have claimed some individual achievements. So, s1mple and electroNic are the first (1.32) and second (1.27) in terms of rating, respectively. Furthermore, while Sasha was the best in the KD difference (+ 215), Denis topped the rating of the difference in damage per round (+ 21.2). Also, s1mple had the best index of 1 + frags per round (54.6%), kills with AWP per round (0.44) and successful opening duels (63.9%).

As for the other regional leagues, 6 slots were at stake in North America and they went to MIBR, Ghost, Team Liquid, NRG, Renegades and INTZ. The remaining 3 places went to South America ( Sharks), Asia ( ViCi) and Oceania ( ORDER).

The venue of the LAN-finals will be "Arena Fyn", sports and concert venue in Odense, Denmark. This site can hold 4000 spectators.

In 2018, ESL made significant changes to the group stage format. So, only the starting matches are going to be Bo1, and all other games will be Bo3, with the grand final, being a Bo5 series. In addition, the group stage will now use double elimination, where the winner goes directly into the semi-finals, and the second and third places begin their way into the playoffs from the quarter-finals.

It is worth recalling that in addition to the prize pool of $ 750,000, teams are fighting for a reward in the side competition - the Intel Grand Slam. This is a challenge that guarantees a team that manages to become a four-time tournament champion (10 attempts after the first victory) from ESL and DreamHack Masters, a cash prize of $ 1,000,000!

At the moment, the situation is such that Astralis has three points and two attempts to complete the challenge. The closest pursuers of the Danes are FaZe Clan (2 points and 3 attempts), North (1 point and 7 attempts) and Natus Vincere (1 point and 6 attempts). In addition, the team that competes with Astralis in the final, while the Danes are one step away from winning the Grand Slam, and defeats the opponent, will receive $ 100,000.

Now let's turn to the group in which NAVI ended up. In the first round, an Australian team ORDER will be the rival of our guys. Current,ly this team is on the 66th place in the HLTV rating. Recently, it took part in the Oceania closed qualifiers and took the third-fourth places.

QUARTER FINALS
SEMIFINALS
WINNERS' FINALS
TO THE SEMIS

MIBR

Sharks

NRG

North

mousesports

Ghost Gaming

NAVI.GG.BET

ORDER

TBD

FIRST ROUND
SECOND ROUND
THIRD ROUND
TO THE QUARTERs

TBD

While the first round will not see the Born to Win fighting with a top opponent, the rivals will become tougher as the event plays on. So, some of the most prominent Group B tags are mousesports, North, NRG and MIBR.

Let's start with the Brazilians, who, for a long time, could not find their game in LAN-tournaments. On ECS S6, they were close to defeating Astralis, which would have brought FalleN and the team their first title in 2018, but the Danes beat MIBR 2-0, although with some challenges (14:16 - Inferno; 20:22 - Overpass). Of course, the Brazilian team is one of the main contenders for exiting the group.

NRG and North will face each other. The teams' paths have already crossed at the aforementioned ECS S6, where they fought for the last ticket to the playoffs, and North was the one to take it. The teams also fought at the previous LAN tournament - IEM Chicago 2018. Just like at the ESL Pro League S8, both squads had to face each other; back then, the Danes (16:10 - Cache) celebrated the victory in the best of 1.

After STYKO rejoined the main mousesports roster, the team struggles to reach the level of the game that was before Martin left. Both of the past LAN tournaments (IEM Chicago and ECS S6) ended somewhat unsatisfactory for the "mice", in fifth-sixth places. In Chicago, they lost ещ Team Liquid (1: 2) and Astralis (0:2); ECS seemed to repeat the setbacks, as Astralis (0: 2) and MIBR (7: 16 - Mirage) were the ones to defeat them.

ESL Pro League S8 will be a serious challenge for Natus Vincere. We believe that our guys will have a productive bootcamp and will approach the championship fully armed! #NAVINATION