Power of CS:GO at FACEIT Major: London 2018!

It’s time for the best CS:GO pro-players to sharpen their skills, to polish their virtual guns, and to face each other at the second (and the last for this year) huge Esports tournament sponsored by Valve – FACEIT Major: London 2018. It’s also time for fans to get themselves ready for such an amazing show, which will take place on September 5-23.

24 teams will fight it out to be named the champion and take the the biggest slice of the $1,000,000 prize money.

Guys, we invite you to have a closer look at this hotly anticipated event! We can’t tell which CS:GO skins pro-players will use, but we can make our predictions about the results – and so did gamers from the DMarket team.

Echo of Boston

Valve Corp., as the developer of CS:GO, sponsors only a few tournaments – and this makes them absolutely special. Year after year, Valve chooses different events, makes their prizes super big, and draws the attention of the whole community to them.

FACEIT Major: London 2018 will be the 13th Valve-sponsored CS:GO competition. The previous was ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 (January 12-28, 2018.) Let’s remind ourselves of the results and the situation in the world highest CS:GO division.

The Boston Major 2018

The Plan of Shooting Battles for FACEIT

The upcoming CS:GO Major will be twin firsts: it will be the biggest event ever hosted by the Faceit platform and the first tournament of its kind in the United Kingdom.

After the game update from April 20, 2018, the map pool has been changed – Dust II replaced Cobblestone. By the way, the latest CS:GO update added a new weapon, MP5-SD.

Unlike DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018, which is a simpler format (four double-elimination groups -> playoffs), the tournament scheme for Valve’s Majors is a bit complicated at first sight.

Among 24 participants:

16 teams got their tickets as the result of their performance in Boston (8 Current Legends: Cloud9, FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, SK Gaming, mousesports, Winstrike Team, G2 Esports, Fnatic; and 8 New Challengers: Gambit Esports, Vega Squadron, Space Soldiers, BIG, Astralis, Team Liquid, North, Virtus.pro);
8 teams are champions of minor events, and they also got the status of New Challengers (two from Europe: Ninjas in Pyjamas and OpTic Gaming, two from the Americas: compLexity Gaming and Rogue, two from the CIS: HellRaisers and Team Spirit, and two from Asia: Renegades and TyLoo).

The New Challengers stage will be first up – 16 teams will play on September 5-9. The top eight teams will proceed further in the tournament. They will be determined in five rounds (1-4 are Bo1, and 5 is Bo3). All the rounds are of the Swiss format, rounds 3-5 are with the Buchholz system.
The New Legends Stage will be second – 16 teams again (8 teams from the previous stage plus 8 New Legends) on September 12-16. All the conditions here are the same as for the New Challengers stage.

To understand properly theSwiss format and theBuchholz system, check the image below:

The New Champions stage will take place on September 20-23, in the SSE Arena, Wembley. There will be three rounds: Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and the Grand Final.

FACEIT Major: London 2018 – DMarket’s Predictions

Making predictions on CS:GO events requires bravery and more than a little luck – you may pick the right teams and be over the moon with happiness, and also you may lose in all of your guesses and just be surprised at all those unexpected comebacks and victories…

Still, we at DMarket took the risk and created this list of potential winners at FACEIT Major 2018.

New Challengers Stage

Here are eight teams, which we believe will succeed, and their probable places:

(1-2) Astralis
(1-2) Team Liquid
(3-5) Big
(3-5) Renegades
(3-5) North
(6-8) Gambit
(6-8) NIP
(6-8) Tyloo

Update | Tournament Situation after the Challengers Stage

Our guesses for this stage weren’t totally correct, which goes to show the real unpredictability of CS:GO Esports.

Here are the eight teams who progressed to the Legends stage:

(1-2) Team Liquid and Ninjas in Pyjamas went undefeated – they won all three matches.
(3-5) Astralis, compLexity Gaming, HellRaisers – these three teams lost only one match of four played.
(6-8) BIG, Vega Squadron, TyLoo had to play all five rounds and won Legend tickets only in the last round (3 wins, 2 defeats).

So, our forecasting mistakes were:

North (they were unable to repeat their success in DreamHack Master in Stockholm. The guys tried to get themselves together but lost their last chance in the match against Vega Squadron.
Gambit and Renegades lost all their matches and left the tournament quite early. We have compLexity Gaming and HellRaisers instead. None of them were favorites for this event anyway.

Did you guess everything right? Did you get new CS:GO collections as a drop during the Live Streams?

New Legends Stage

Here we picked the top eight teams to continue the battle in the Playoff matches:

(1-2) Astralis
(1-2) mousesports
(3-5) FaZe Clan
(3-5) Na’Vi
(3-5) Team Liquid
(6-8) Fnatic
(6-8) MIBR
(6-8) BIG

Update #2 | Faceit Major after the Legends Stage

Matches of the Legends stage are finished, and we know all the eight teams in the Playoffs. They are:

(1-2) – compLexity Gaming and Team Liquid. If the first here is a bit of surprise, the second team proved its power again. Liquid has had no losses at this CS:GO tournament so far.
(3-5) – Na’Vi, BIG, Astralis. There are no surprises here. These teams are CS:GO Legends and Champions, so even one loss at this stage couldn’t stop them from proceeding to Playoffs.
(6-8) – FaZe, HellRaisers, MIBR. Being in such powerful company is a great success for HellRaisers. It will be interesting to see this team in the quarterfinals.

New Legends Stage results FACEit Major London 2018

What about our predictions? Where were we wrong?

mousesports lost all their matches and left the tournament after three rounds.
Fnatic were fighting until the last round, where they unexpectedly lost to HellRaisers.

New Champions Stage

First, let’s have a look at the Playoff brackets:

Play off bracket FaceIT Major London 2018

And here are our predictions for the Champions stage:

Quarterfinals:

compLexity – MIBR -> MIBR.
BIG – Na’Vi -> Na’Vi.
Team Liquid – HellRaisers -> Team Liquid.
Astralis – FaZe -> Astralis.

Semifinals:

MIBR – Na’Vi -> Na’Vi.
Team Liquid – Astralis -> Astralis.

Grand Final:

Na’Vi – Astralis -> Astralis.

What do you think? Maybe Astralis will win because the team became the champion of ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2018? Share your opinion in the comments below!

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