ESL One Katowice

[Da Jinks]

ESL One Katowice is the next major tournament to be played in CS:GO. Sponsored by Valve, it boasts a 250,000$ prize pool and will be played on March 12-15. Watching the official streams on a Steam linked Twitch account or the GOTV stream via CS:GO itself with grant a possibility of souvenir package drops.

Groups for the tournament are currently set at:

[xtable=bcenter|border:0]
{tbody}
{tr}
{td}Group A{/td}
{td}Group B{/td}
{td}Group C{/td}
{td}Group D{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td}

Na`Vi{/td}
{td}

EnVyUs{/td}
{td}

NiP{/td}
{td}

Virtus.pro{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td}

fnatic{/td}
{td}

PENTA Sports{/td}
{td}

HellRaisers{/td}
{td}

Team SoloMid{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td}

Vox Eminor{/td}
{td}

LGB eSports{/td}
{td}

CLG{/td}
{td}

Cloud9{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td}

Flipsid3 Tactics{/td}
{td}

Titan{/td}
{td}

Keyd Stars{/td}
{td}

3DMAX{/td}
{/tr}
{/tbody}
[/xtable]

Thread will be updated with a schedule when available.

So who is everyone rooting for? Any guesses at who will make it past the group stages? And winner of the entire event?

 

[Love]

Personally rooting for NiP, but since Maikelele's out, I'm not liking their chances. Delpan hasn't really done as well as lelelele. We'll probably be seeing another major won by fnatic, let's be honest. C9 isn't going to go far. F3T might be showing up soon, we'll see. Not sure who SoloMid are. They new to the Major scene?

 

[77thShad]

Na Vi ftw love GuadiaN's awp clutches

 

[Specter2k11]

deffinitely not fnatic.

 

[Prizyms]

Delpan hasn't really done as well as lelelele.

Allu is playing for NiP not Delpan. Maikel never really felt like a NiP player to me - he played very aggressively (uncharacteristic of the team) and unfortunately lacked the reflexes to compete with top AWPers such as kennyS and fxy0.

Not sure who SoloMid are. They new to the Major scene?

TSM is the new organisation for the Danish team once known as Dignitas (dupreeh, device, Xyp9x, cajunb, Karrigan)

 

[Velzerat]

I'm thinking Fnatic is going to win- Performance-wise they're the best team right now. But I'm rooting for NiP, I think pretty much everyone loves those guys.

 

[Da Jinks]

let's be honest. C9 isn't going to go far.

I wouldn't quite count them out yet.

As much as I really hated the change, they needed a AWPer and we are going to see with this tourney if ShaZham can provide them with a solid AWP to counter pazha, device (I think he is TSM's AWper?) and possibly even SmithZzZ, allu and JW going forward. Beyond that, shroud has been having incredible performances lately and I think will end up being the next swag for NA. I really think they can make it past groups, and if not at least will be interesting to see how they perform at another major w/ changes.

 

[Iguana]

its going to be great taking all the skins of these NA fanboys

 

[Da Jinks]

ESL recently announced a fantasy league for the Katowice tournament: http://fantasy.eslgaming.com/csgo.

Basics for it: Each player is given a dollar value, and you are given a set amount of dollars. Buy a team using that money, and gain points based on how your players perform.

I've created a league for Blocktopia (http://fantasy.eslgaming.com/join/4565/6e75ccc8eabadb9b1050ec0ddac50e10). Anyone can join if they wish, and I MIGHT be able to have prizes for the winner ;3

EDIT: JUST LEARNED IT IS A ACTUAL DRAFT, IN WHICH ONCE A PLAYER IS DRAFTED TO A TEAM THEY ARE GONE. PLAYERS CAN BE SWAPPED, BUT YEAH.

Draft will start on Wednesday at 5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. If you want to discuss your goal for a team/teams in other leagues I suppose discuss that instead.

 

[Love]

Katowice TODAY!

Get hyped!

 

[Da Jinks]

EnVyUS vs. Na'Vi.
TSM vs. NiP.
fnatic vs. Penta.
Virtus.pro vs. Keyd Stars.

Gonna be good day :)

 

[Love]

fnatic pick up their second major in a very, VERY close game against NiP, final score comes to 16-13 after NiP was down 11-4 at the half. This was somewhat shades of ESL Cologne in 2014 with NiP vs fnatic, just the roles were reversed.

I'd like to say, ggwp. Allu really showed up in this major, topfragging across both scoreboards I believe. I think he might be a good addition to NiP.

(Also a good source of humour!)

 

[Da Jinks]

Winner of the ESL Fantasy Team ER League was davidjl123!

He won with the following lineup:
Get_Right.
n0thing.
Olofmeister.
kioShiMa.
Happy.

He won a Desert Eagle | Conspiracy (MW condition) renamed "The Last Word".

Next time this is done I'll probably set it up earlier and use our forum features over the Fantasy system.