Epicenter of CS:GO Excitement: Moscow Tournament Preview

Great CS:GO teams gather in Moscow, Russia, to play in the top-tier Esports event – Epicenter 2018. The competition takes place on October 22-28. The prize pool here is $300,000.

Previously, there were two Epicenter tournaments in the CS:GO discipline:

Epicenter 2016, in Moscow. Team Dignitas became the winner, Virtus.pro took 2nd place, SK Gaming and Natus Vincere were 3rd-4th.
Epicenter 2017, in St. Petersburg. SK Gaming won the competition, Virtus.pro came 2nd again, G2 Esports finished in 3rd place, and Astralis took 4th.

Also, Epicenter conducts Dota 2 tournaments. In 2018, this was Epicenter XL, won by PSG.LGD (April 27 – May 6). Later, this team finished second at The International 2018, the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year.

Teams at Epicenter 2018

Fights for Esports glory make such an exciting show – for both players and viewers (with amazing CS:GO skins) involved. This time in Moscow, we’ll be able to enjoy battles of four invited teams and four teams from the Wild Card qualifying stage.

Invited teams are:

Natus Vincere (winners of ESL One: Cologne 2018, second place at FACEIT Major: London 2018);
Team Liquid (second place at ESL One: New York 2018);
FaZe Clan (winners of ESL One: Belo Horizonte 2018);
mousesports (winners of ESL One: New York 2018);

One more Epicenter invitation was given to Astralis, but the Danish team decided to skip this tournament. After victory at Faceit Major and BLAST Pro Series: Istanbul 2018, Astralis guys want to rest a bit from such a busy schedule. The next event for them is going to be Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII – Chicago, on November 06-11.

Four more tickets to the Group Stage are given in the Wild Card stage. Two teams with higher HLTV rank proceed further automatically. They are:

AVANGAR – from the CIS qualifier;
ENCE eSports – from the Europe qualifier (winners of StarSeries & i-League Season 6);

The other four teams will fight it out in playoff matches for the two remaining places (on October 22).

The Group Stage and Playoffs

Eight teams will be divided into two groups. Matches of the Group Stage take place on October 23-25, all of them are of Bo3, double-elimination format. Group winners proceed directly to the semifinal matches. Second and third placed teams continue the tournament in the quarterfinals.

October 27-28 are the days of the Playoffs. They also are Bo3 format.

To watch CS:GO Epicenter 2018, visit this official Twitch Channel.

We expect some interesting performances from Na’Vi and Team Liquid – both teams are super motivated to get this victory (and money) after bitter loses at Faceit Major and ESL One: New York. Mouz and FaZe are also favorites for this tournament. Virtus.pro may gather strength to win Epicenter at last, after two second places. Of course, the other teams from the Wild Card stage may surprise the experts and their opponents.

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