ESL ONE New York Qualifiers Have Their Winners

The upcoming ESL ONE major once again returns to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, this year during 16th – 17th September. 8 of the top world teams will compete for the weighty trophy and $250,000 prize pool. These 6 teams have already been invited and confirmed their attendance to the event:

• Astralis
• Virtus.pro
• Natus Vincere
• SK Gaming
• FaZe Clan
• Team Liquid

The remaining two spots in the major are determined by European and North American closed qualifiers which took place during the weekend of 18th – 20th August. The qualifiers themselves were predetermined by open qualifiers from which PRIDE advanced at the European part and compLexity secured a spot at the NA one.

First spots in both tournaments were filled and 7+7 invited teams completed both European and North American qualifiers and prepared to compete in a single-elimination bracket with typical best of three format.

There were some last minute changes to the North American competing teams list when Immortals, OpTic Gaming, and Misfits excused themselves and withdrew from the qualifier. The three spots have been promptly replaced by the teams next in the line from the open qualifier held previously. Those were RiseNation, TempoStorm, and L4ORG.

European Brackets

G2	2:0	PRIDE
EnVyUs	2:0	HellRaisers
FlipSid3	1:2	Gambit
NiP	0:2	BIG

European Semifinals

The first semifinal match was played between G2 and EnVyUs on Inferno, where G2 managed to closely secure their first win with 16:12. Cache turned the situation and score in favor of EnVyUs who came up with 16:12 in their favor. Final game on Cobblestone confirmed the supremacy of EnVyUs who advanced to the grandfinals with 16: 6 and total score of 2:1.

In the second semifinal match a German team BIG faced Gambit from Kazakhstan, who absolutely owned their opponents on Train and wrapped the game with score 16:5. BIG played their cards right on Overpass and after winning the first half with one point advance they regained their lost confidence and carried the second half to their first win with conviction, 16:8. Gambit however turned the tables in the final match and with the score 16:4 did not allow their opponents to score a single point in the final half of the match.

European Grand Finals

Gambit’s AdreN was the star of the match, where he performed a quad kill in the second pistol round and then followed this trick with a quad kill clutch a few rounds later. The stars of EnVyUs were undeniably Scream and his ACE alongside with Happy, who started the first pistol round on Train with a quad kill. The performance of EnVyUs was solid and they secured both of the games for themselves without hesitation and thus claimed the first remaining spot in the major.

North American Brackets

Cloud9	2:1	L4Org
Renegades	0:2	compLexity
NRG	1:2	Rise Nation
CLG	2:0	Tempo Storm

North American Semifinals

Cloud 9 faced Complexity in the first semifinal match and whether it was on Inferno or later on Train, they absolutely dominated both of the matches and did not even give Complexity a chance to score more than 3 points in both second halves combined. The score turned out 16:7 and 16:12 and with this Cloud 9 secured their place in the final battle.

The remaining match placed two neighbours against each other, Canadian Rise Nation vs CLG from the USA. On Cobblestone it looked like Counter Logic Gaming would repeat the clear cut victory they had with Tempo Storm earlier in the tournament, however after they won the first round 16: 8, they were not able to deliver enough points on Train. Their moral got even lower on Inferno, where they completely squandered the first round and only managed to score 3 points at the second one. With this performance from their side, 12:16, 3:16, it is clear that the spot in grandfinals rightfully belongs to Rise Nation.

North American Grand Finals

The first game didn’t probably go as well as planned for the Rise Nation, who had the bet odds against them from the start. When they force buyed and canceled out Cloud 9’s pistol round, the game started to look a bit more promising to them, however it still wasn’t enough to beat the USA stars and the first game on Cobblestone went to Cloud 9, 16:3.

On Mirage, which was ironically Cloud 9’s map of choice, Rise Nation were the ones to shine. Even though Stewie2k delivered a quad kill to break their win streak and earned his American fellows one of 9 total points, Rise Nation secured the map easily with 16:9.

The left over map Inferno motivated Cloud 9 to once again do their best as a team and let Skadoodle do his magic. And he most certainly did. Not only did he snipe down three of his opponents to close out the first half, he also poetically closed out the map with a triple kill as well and led his team through the qualifier for ESL ONE New York. Skadoodle wasn’t the only valuable player in the game, the whole team worked as one piece and didn’t let Rise Nation score more than 2 points in total. The final roster for ESL ONE NEW York is following:

• Astralis
• Virtus.pro
• Natus Vincere
• SK Gaming
• FaZe Clan
• Team Liquid
• EnVyUs
• Cloud 9