News
CS:GO – BLAST Premier Series: with more teams and a new format, it will start!
The competitive season of Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is back with the BLAST Premier: Spring contest. Between January 31 and February 16, 12 teams will be in London, England, to compete in the competition that will have a new format, divided into three stages. The first, called the Regular Season, the teams were divided into three groups, each of which will be played over a weekend. They will battle for one of the seats in Global Premier: Finals and a portion of the $ 300k prize pool from this one stage.
Title Defenders
Astralis won the BLAST Pro Series: Global Finals in 2019. (Image: BLAST)
Astralis comes to the BLAST dispute as a big favorite for the title. Nicolai “device” Reedtz's team is the current champion of the BLAST Pro Series Global Finals – beat Team Liquid in the final played in Bahrain. The year 2020 started in the same way as 2019, with the Danes leading the ranking of the website HLTV and as a team to be beaten in the professional circuit of CS:GO. There were six titles in 2019, including the Majors of IEM Katowice and StarLadder Berlin.
Best of the world
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, from Vitality, receiving the MVP medal from EPICENTER 2019. (Image: EPICENTER)
In his second year as a professional, Frenchman Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut was elected the best CS: GO player in the world in 2019. There were three titles won in the last year: EPICENTER, the 7th season of ECS and cs_summit 4. For to maintain the position of best in the world, ZywOo will have his first challenge in the BLAST Premier: Spring dispute and will face Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev's NaVi, which came in second in the ranking. In addition to NaVi, Team Vitality has the company of Astralis and CompLexity in Group B.
In search of redemption
MIBR players prepare for the 2020 season. (Image: MIBR)
2020 did not start the way Brazilians expected it to. MIBR ended up losing the qualifiers for the IEM Katowice dispute, after being defeated in the final by Cloud9. Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo's team traveled to Poland for a training period before the BLAST Premier match. The competition will be the second face-to-face tournament after the entry of Argentine Ignacio “meyern” Meyer. The Argentine made his debut for the Brazilian team in the dispute for cs_summit 4, at the end of 2019.
New Ninjas
After more than seven years, a new era has come to Ninjas in Pajamas. The legendary Swedish organization announced the departure of the last player from the team's first CS: GO line-up. Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg left the organization to join Christopher “GeT_RighT Alesund, and his other former NiP companions, at Dignitas.
“Joining NiP is an amazing feeling. It has been a dream ever since I started playing CS:GO and to be honest, it still feels quite unreal“ – Tim @nawwkcs Jonasson
Everyone, please welcome Tim to the NiP Family!
Full announcement: https://t.co/u7hIBA3u6h#GONINJAS #CSGO pic.twitter.com/plSeuHL14P
— Ninjas in Pyjamas ?? (@NiPGaming) January 21, 2020
For Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg, NiP hired Tim “nawwk” Jonasson, formerly of GamerLegion. The 22-year-old Swede will have his first big break in a big organization and will already have BLAST Premier as his first challenge.
Groups
As we have already posted here, the BLAST Premier Spring Series groups have already been revealed. You can check the full article here.
Group A
FaZe
Liquid
MIBR
NiP
Group B
Astarlis
COmplexity
Natus Vincere
Vitality
Group C
100 Thieves
Evil Geniuses
G2
OG
Dispute Format
For the BLAST Premier: Spring Regular Season contest, the 12 teams were divided into three groups with four participants. This phase of the tournament will take place over three weekends, each being played by a group. Matches take place in a better series of three maps (MD3) and in a double elimination format. The two best teams advance to the BLAST Premier: Finals competition, while the others will have to compete in the BLAST Premier: Showdown.
Group A
Friday, January 31
12:30 –FaZe vs.
NiP | BO3
16:30 –Liquid vs.
MIBR | BO3
Saturday, February 1
12:30 – Group A lower bracket round 1 | BO3
16:30 – Group A upper bracket final | BO3
Sunday, February 2
12:30 – Group A consolidation final |BO3
15:30 – Group A final | BO3
Group B
Friday, February 7
12:30 –Natus Vincere vs.
Vitality | BO3
16:30 –Astralis vs.
Saturday, February 8
12:30 – Group B lower bracket round 1 | BO3
16:30 – Group B upper bracket final | BO3
Sunday, February 9
12:30 – Group B consolidation final | BO3
16:30 – Group B final | BO3
Group C
Friday, February 14
12:30 –100 Thieves vs.
16:30 –
Saturday, February 15
12:30 – Group C lower bracket round 1 | BO3
16:30 – Group C upper bracket final | BO3
Sunday, February 16
12:30 – Group C consolidation final | BO3
16:30 – Group C final | BO3
Awards
The first phase of BLAST Premier has a total prize pool of US$ 300,000, which will be divided among the participating teams. In addition to the money, the two best teams in each group guarantee a place in the finals.
