GG.Bet Ice Challenge with $250,00 at Stake is About to Start

GG.Bet Ice Challenge 2020 will start this weekend in London, United Kingdom. The event will feature eight European teams competing for a $250,000 prize pool.

The tournament will begin with a group stage, scheduled for February 1st-2nd. The teams have been seeded into two GSL groups with best-of-three series as follows:

In Group A’s first matches Virtus.pro will face Heroic (12:45 PM UK Time), while mousesports will play with MAD Lions (4:30 PM). The competition in Group B will start with a matchup between OG and ENCE (9:00 AM), later Natus Vincere will face GODSENT (8:15 PM).

Top two teams from each group will advance directly to the semifinals, while the teams placed second and third will start from the quarterfinals.

The playoffs stage is scheduled for February 4-6th and will feature a single-elimination bracket with regular matches being best-of-three and the grand finals being best-of-five.

According to GG.Bet’s outright odds, the main favourites of the tournament are Natus Vincere and mousesports. The latter team is currently ranked #2 in the world ranking – while the roster was formed last March, it looks like they reached their full potential just recently, as in the last few months they emerged victorious at CS:GO Asia Championship 2019, ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals and cs_summit 5, as well as placed second at EPICENTER 2019. As for Natus Vincere, they are currently ranked #9 in the world, with their latest results being subpar – recently they finished 3rd at BLAST Pro Series: Copenhagen 2019, 3rd-4th at ESL Pro League Finals and 5-6th at EPICENTER 2019. However, a week ago they replaced Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács with Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy, thus the event will be the debut for their updated roster.

The tournament will be covered by Maincast and broadcasted on their Twitch channel.