StarLadder Berlin Major: Preview

The "New Legends" stage will start on August 28th!

There are only a few days left before the first games of  NAVI.GG.BET at the second major of 2019, which means it is time to talk about the venue, the format of the competition, as well as to refresh our memory with interesting facts about our team at the tournaments co-organized by Valve.

The venue for StarLadder Berlin Major

One of the main Counter-Strike championships this time will be held in the capital of Germany — Berlin. There will be two venues for StarLadder Berlin Major: Verti Music Hall (New Candidates and New Legends stage) and Mercedes-Benz Arena (final stage of the tournament). As usually the case in this kind of competition, the group stage will be held without fans.

The final stage of the tournament will take place at the Mercedes-Benz Arena, a multifunctional indoor stadium, which is the home arena of the "Eisbären" hockey club and the basketball club "Alba". The opening of the arena took place on September 10, 2008. Until 2015, the arena was called O2 World Berlin. The stadium has a capacity for 17,000 spectators. Another interesting fact: on October 31, 2015, the Mercedes Benz Arena was the home for the finals of the League of Legends World Championship.

StarLadder Berlin Major format

In 2019, the format of Valve tournaments changed slightly. As before, at the “New Challengers” and “New Legends” stages, the Swiss system will take place, but instead of the best of 1, all the decisive matches will last until two victories. So, fights between teams with statistics 2: 0, 2: 1, 2: 2, 1: 2, 0: 2 will be held in the format of best of 3.

Also, the ELO rating system is now used for seeding. The starting games of each stage are formed in accordance with the team rating on the HLTV website from March 4 to August 12. Then the team rating will change depending on the results in each individual match: the winners will take away some of the rating points from the losers.

Recall that eight teams from the "New Challengers" stage will advance to "New Legends" stage. The eight best teams from "New Legends" will also advance to "New Champions" stage and guarantees the status of "Legends" for the next Major. Those who failed at the “New Legends” stage will retain the right to start their performance at the next Valve tournament from the “New Challengers” stage, with the exception of the two worst teams with 0–3 game statistics. These teams will be forced to go through a full qualifying cycle, starting with the Minors.

As for the playoffs, there were no changes and the format will remain the same: single elimination, best of 3. The championship will feature 24 teams that will play for $ 1,000,000. Schedule: 28 August — 1 September will be the stage of "New Legends", and from 5 to 8 September will be the final stage of the tournament.

Interesting facts about NAVI's participation in Major tournaments

— Born to win participated in 14 majors, three times leaving the tournament at the group stage, five times in the top-8, three times in the top-4 and three times reached the final.

— In total,  NAVI at the Major tournaments played 91 maps (52 wins and 39 defeats).

— The most tense was the match against Vitality at the IEM Katowice Major, which ended with a score of 25 : 22 (Mirage) in favor of our guys.

— The most playable  NAVI maps are Inferno and Mirage (18 games). Cache was picked only once against Team EnVyUs at ESL One Katowice 2015.

— The best winrate (80%) guys demonstrate on Train: 8 wins and 2 losses. If you don't count Cache, our team's worst win rate is on Nuke: 6 games, only 1 of which is in the bag of our guys.

And that's the preview for the upcoming tournament. We hope that in Berlin  Natus Vincere players will please the fans with a good performance and try to win the title of champions of the Major tournament! #NAVINATION