The Pen

Text: Jorg Gortemaker

Hello everyone, I would like to use this space to talk about eSports. No, this was not a typo, instead of talking about the Football World Cup I am talking about the CS:GO Rio Major, one of the biggest events in eSports of the past year. I would like to take this page to introduce you to this wonderful eSports event and my personal experience.

So to start of: What is a CS:GO major? It is an event that happens twice a year and winning it is equivalent to winning Wimbeldon in Tennis or winning the Champions league in Football. Teams qualify themselves by playing in regional events and are then seeded according to their ranking. Europe gets most of these spots, some go to North America and what is left over is distributed between Asia, South America and Oceania. At the major there are three stages, the Challenger stage, Legends stage and Champions stage. They are comparable to the preliminary round of the Champions League, the group stage of the Champions league and the knock-out phase of the Champions league respectively. Some teams are directly seeded in the Legends stage and other ours have to fight for a spot in the Challenger stage.

These stages use a very common format for eSports which is the Swiss format. You play matches until you have either won 3 matches, in which case you qualify, or you lose 3 matches, then you will be eliminated. Every match is against a team with the same record, have you won 2 and lost 1, you will be drawn against an opponent who has also won 2 matches and lost 1. This is a great format for ‘Cinderella’ stories to happen, teams could lose 2 matches and still have a chance to qualify.

During the major I was rooting for my favourite team, Mouz. They are a German organization and they have had a Dutch player on their team for a long time, they are gone now, but I have stuck with the team. They had to start out in the Challenger stage because the qualification did not go too well for them and a lot of people thought they would bomb out of the tournament. However, against all odds, they managed to win 3 matches and lose none. So with a 3-0 record they had already well exceeded almost everyone’s expectations. The Legends stage started out great with a big 16-2* win over North America’s number one seed Liquid, but then they had a hiccup along the way and despite beating Vitality in a thrilling overtime match, which ended 1917, they had a 2-2 record. If they were to win they would qualify for the Champions Stage, if they lost it would be the end of their tournament. They managed to edge out the other team, Ence, with a 2-1 win (16-5, 8-16, 16-9) and they got to the Champions Stage.

This stage is a simple knock-out phase, starting with the quarter finals. Mouz had to go up against one of the teams with a 3-0 record and a favourite to win the tournament, and somehow they even managed to overcome this battle. Sadly in the Semi-final they lost out to now Major Champions in Outsiders.

I thought they had an amazing run, especially since everyone thought they would not even make it to the second stage. I think that is what makes CS:GO majors so great, they are three weeks of a lot of great matches and even underdogs can make great runs into the tournament. Be sure to check out the next major, which takes place in Paris from the eighth until the 21st of May next year.