Of the eight teams only Natus Vincere and FaZe Clan have qualified for the World Final after their victories in the BLAST Premier Spring Finals, ESL Pro League and PGL Major. Not only will the winner of this tournament book their spot in the World Final next month, but they will also take home the US$200,000 winners’ cheque.
Esports betting sites have Natus Vincere ($3.75) as their favourite followed by, Heroic ($4.00), FaZe Clan ($5.00), G2 Esports ($6.50), Team Liquid ($7.50), Ninjas in Pyjamas ($11.00), OG ($11.00) and Fluxo ($34.00).
G2 Esports haven’t been seen at an international since they finished 3rd-4th at ESL Pro League 16 in early October, where they lost to Vitality 0-2 in the semi-final. After the ESL Pro League, G2 participated in the European RMR for the 2022 IEM Rio Major, but they were unable to qualify, finishing 12th-14th. After their recent form slump and inability to qualify for the Major, the organisation saw it fit to relieve the G2 coach, Remy “XTQZZ” Quoniam, of his duties.
Now Jan “Swani” Muller will take over the coaching duties for the G2 Esports CS:GO team on an interim basis, but as we know, this could be a perfect audition for Swani to gain the job permanently with some good performances. G2 will come into the BLAST Premier Fall Finals refreshed after having six weeks off the professional scene. We expect to see something new from G2 now that they have a new coach their new additions, Justin “jks” Savage and Rasmus “HooXi” Nielsen, have had time to practice with the team, since joining them three months ago.
Natus Vincere and FaZe Clan are going to be hard to beat, but with the added advantage of not having to fly to Brazil and play in the Major and more time to practice, we see G2 Esports as the one to beat in Copenhagen.
The all-Danish CS:GO team got off to a rough start in the competition, suffering a defeat at the hands of Ninjas in Pyjamas in the first round by a score of 16-10. However, Astralis was able to come back to the bottom bracket of the group and win both of their games against OG (16-9) and NiP (16-9) before gaining the opportunity to play Vitality in the group final.
Benjamin “blameF” Bremer, one of the players for Astralis, was pleased with the triumph against Vitality, but he cautioned the squad that they ought to look out for the missteps that they had made, particularly in the early part of the match.
“I’m happy with the result but I still think there is a lot of stuff that we need to fix and improve,” blameF said in a post-match interview with James Banks.
Given how well Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and the rest of the Vitality team had been performing throughout, Astralis was believed to be the underdogs when competing against Vitality, with a $2.45 odds placed on the former and a $1.60 odds on the latter with the top Esport betting sites. Astralis came out on top in the group final because of the team’s concerted effort, which was fought out on Mirage and included a lot of back-and-forth action. Asger “Farlig” Jensen, an AWPer, finished the game with the highest kills for Astralis (29), but Andreas “Xyp9x” Hjsleth equally stood out. He finished the match with 26 kills, and he also had the best highlight of the match, which was a quad kill whilst also holding the B bombsite.
“[There are] a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t commit. It would be nice if we didn’t do that because that can be a bit stressful sometimes. But yeah, of course, I’m happy. I don’t think we expected to go through first in this group and also a lot of people said we got lucky in IEM Cologne (Note: Astralis finished top four at that tournament), so it felt good to show that we might not be number four in the world but we can still beat the top 10 teams.”
After the conclusion of the matches in Group A, Astralis, Vitality, NiP, and OG will only compete on the BLAST Premier Fall Groups servers during the knockout stage the following week. This stage will determine which six of the 12 teams competing will advance to the Fall Finals, which will take place in November. The second day of competition in this tournament began yesterday with Group B featuring Natus Vincere, G2, Team Liquid, and Complexity.
Each of the competitors will find out who they will face in the Gauntlet round. This stage will begin on Thursday, August 25, and will follow a best of three single-elimination formats all odds for game day are available on GG.Bet.
]]>The news of the new G2 team captain confirms previously circulated reports after Aleksib was taken off the lineup. HooXi joined the team after leading his previous squad, Copenhagen Flames, to impressive heights.
Under him, the team reached the quarter-final stage of the PGL Antwerp Major. The Copenhagen Flames were also present in recent Stockholm Majors and, at some point, joined the best teams in the world in the top 10 world rankings.
G2’s new in-game leader is the last player from the Copenhagen Flames to get signed to a team in the offseason successfully. Sprout had taken on Rasmus ‘Zyphon’ Nordfoss, Jakob ‘jabbi’ Nygaard is now a part of Heroic, and Fnatic signed both Fredrik ‘roeJ’ J?rgensen and Nico ‘nicoodoz’ Tamjidi.
Earlier this summer, HooXi was linked with Evil Geniuses. However, the organization ended up adding K23’s Sanzhar ‘neaLaN’ Iskhakov to their roster. The Danish player was previously criticized for his lack of international experience as well as some individual issues.
In the press release made by G2, the German organization revealed that the player being an experienced leader combined with his “cool comms” is a perfect fit for the organization.
“HooXi (who?), is an experienced IGL who has qualified for back to back Majors and is ready to help G2 win one. His cool comms and insane entry frags have us watering at the mouth as we await his G2 debut.”
When facing up against some of the top 10 opposition, the player averaged a 0.84 rating while Aleksib had a 0.93 rating. HooXi has also only been in attendance at three major tournaments, which include IEM Katowice 2022 and two PGL Majors.
The previous in-game leader of G2, Aleksib, was allowed to consider other opportunities after an unimpressive season with no trophies for the European team. After a particularly poor performance at the IEM Cologne, Aleksib announced his benching and asked interested teams to contact the team’s head.During the competition, G2 crashed out of the $1 million prize pool tournament in the early stages.
“Hey everyone, I’ve been allowed by G2 to explore my options elsewhere,” Aleksib tweeted. “Feel free to reach out to @G2Mayne if you have any interest. More to follow.”
The player was signed to the team in January of this year and took the place of Nemanja “nexa” Isakovi? to lead the team in tournaments. He had a good start with the team at the beginning of the year as the franchise finished as runners-up at the IEM Katowice held in February.
However, they were unable to build up on that. G2 proceeded to lose in the early stages of events like the PGL Antwerp Major, ESL Pro League season 15, and the most recent, the IEM Cologne.
The possibility of Aleksib being benched started circulating when the founder and CEO of G2, Carlos Rodrigues, announced the team’s intention to evaluate its CS:GO roster before the summer player break.
Hooki will be looking to start his debut strong in the BLAST Premier Fall Groups on August 20 as they go in as $1.63 favourites with the top esport betting sites against Team Liquid.