BLAST Pro Series Miami: Preview

The tournament will start at late night of April 12!

The BLAST Pro Series Miami will be held from April 12 to 13, this time around it is making a stop in the United States. Let's see what we should expect from the championship.

This championship series is known for frequent changes in competition venues. So, BLAST Pro Series has already been held in Istanbul and twice in Copenhagen, in December the championship found home at Lisbon, in 2019 the championship was held in Sao Paulo and is guaranteed to take place in Miami and Madrid.

The venue of the BLAST Pro Series Miami will be the Watson Center multi-functional complex, which was opened in January 2003. The capacity of the arena is about 8,000 spectators.

There are no qualifications for the BLAST Pro Series: NAVI, FaZe Clan,  Cloud9,  Team Liquid,  Astralis, and  MIBR received a direct invitation to the championship. The prize fund for the competition will be $ 250,000. The winners of the five previous BLAST Pro Series tournaments were Natus Vincere, SK Gaming (now MIBR) and three times Astralis.

It is worth mentioning that the organizers of BLAST primarily decided to move away from the usual format of GSL or the Swiss system, plus the playoffs. Instead, the format for the championship will be Round-Robin for the group stage: each team plays one match with everyone else. At the end of the group stage, the two best teams will make it into the grand finals, which will be a Bo3.

In addition, a special show match will be held at the BLAST Pro Series Miami with an additional $ 20,000 prize fund. The team that took third place in the group will choose an opponent from the three remaining teams. The format of the meeting will include five 1 vs 1 duels.

Now let's take a look at the group stage of the tournament and the rivals of our team. On the first day,  NAVI has two matches on schedule – with MIBR and Astralis. After a promising  MIBR performance at the Major, the top five's performance declined. Obviously, the Brazilians themselves are unhappy with such circumstances: departure from the tournament in the WESG quarterfinal, the last place at the home turf of the BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo and the 12th-14th places on the StarSeries S7. So far, the reunification of the 2017  SK Gaming lineup has not paid off, and the Brazilians have less and less time to make this work properly.

NAVI.GG.BET matches

Teams	Start time CEST	Match announcement	Match page
April 13th
NAVI.GG.BET00MIBR	23:00	match announcement
NAVI.GG.BET00 Astralis	00:30	match announcement
NAVI.GG.BET00Team Liquid	18:00	match announcement
NAVI.GG.BET00FaZe Clan	19:20	match announcement
NAVI.GG.BET00Cloud9	20:40	match announcement

As for Astralis, this team needs no introduction. With a large margin, Danes lead the list of the best teams in the world, having won the last two Majors, as well as becoming the first holders of the Intel Grand Slam title. After Katowice,  Astralis participated only in the BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo, where they won the champions title, losing only one of eight maps!

The second day promises to be busier. Teams will move to the arena and will perform in front of thousands of fans! Potentially, besides the three remaining matches of the group stage, NAVI awaits the final bo3 bout on the same day.

The first rival will be the third team in the world ranking – Team Liquid. As in the case of Astralis, the latest liquid LAN tournament was the BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo. Team Liquid reached the grand finals where they put up a good fight and beat the Danes on one of maps, but it stopped there. IEM Katowice Major left the American team in a frustrated way, ending the competitions in quarter-final: Liquid lost to  ENCE.

Next, the Born to Win will face against the  FaZe Clan, which after the departure of  karrigan cannot find a suitable playstyle for themselves. Definitely, the last tournament did not give confidence to the European team: FaZe Clan did not manage to take the last step to get into the playoffs at the StarSeries S7, and finished the competition with 2-3 game stats, even thought at one point they had two wins with no losses. There are rumors that the  FaZe Clan wants to invite someone to the position of captain, to give some freedom to  NiKo. Most likely, the European team will likely to make some changes in case of unsuccessful results at the upcoming championships.

The NAVI and  Cloud9 standoff will complete the group stage. After the success in early 2018 at ELEAGUE Boston Major,  Cloud9 never managed to find a recipe for stable results. The departure of the key players ( tarik and Stewie2K) to  MIBR also affected the team play. From this point on, Cloud9 tried to focus on European players: flusha, kioShiMa and Golden. However, this decision had fallen short and only  Golden remained from this trio. Two vacant seats went to cajunb and  vice, for which the LAN-tournament in Miami will become the debut in the  Cloud9 lineup. We will see if the current version of the American team will be able to perform on the BLAST Pro Series Miami.

We hope that the NAVI players will be inspired by the victory at the StarSeries S7 and transfer the acquired confidence to the BLAST Pro Series. We believe that the  Natus Vincere will be in a good state to fight for the champion title in Miami and will delight the fans with a beautiful Counter-Strike! #NAVINATION