Review of ESL Pro League Season 13
Ihor MatusIncredible performance from Heroic and Gambit Esports
The review of the group stage covered the fact that Gambit and Heroic managed to show a wonderful show and had no loss at the group stage. The teams completed the stage with the statistics 5-0 which deserves due respect. The tendency of their domination continued in the playoff. There Heroic beat FURIA Esports with 2-0 and made it to the grand final where they defeated Gambit Esports with 3-2. Even though the latter lost, a lot of discussions have been instigated. The team beat NiP 2-0 and could show an extremely serious battle at the decisive match against Heroic.
In this Bo5 meeting, the teams had to take a series of additional rounds twice to define the winner. On Inferno, for example, the teams completed the battle with 19-17, and Train was unable to finish even with two series of additional rounds. There the meeting ended with 28-26 for Heroic. The СЕО of Gambit Konstantin Pikiner assumes that Train became a morally decisive map in this battle:
"We've had experience of playing Bо5, but it used to finish with four maps and last for about four hours. Yesterday we played approximately seven hours, and some of our players felt powerless on the seventh map. During the game I understood that everything would become clear on Train - who wins the marathon of overtimes, wins the series. This is what happened. The players, of course, were very disappointed but all of them were happy for Axile who was playing hard during the whole tournament and deserved the MVP title".
After the end of the tournament both participants in the grand final got their reward. Gambit Esports took second place and gained a monetary reward of $85,000? 1,400 BLAST Premier rating points and also 1,000 ESL Pro Tour points, and, additionally, the team took first place in the list of the best CS:GO rosters. The team became the first CIS roster, except for NAVI, that managed to make it to the leaders of the best CS:GO teams according to HLTV. Meanwhile, Heroic's win at the event resulted in a considerable monetary reward of $200,000, and also gained an invitation to BLAST Premier Global Finals 2021 with the prize pool of $1,000,000. Ax1le, as it was already mentioned in Konstantin's speech, deserved the award of the most valuable player which must have definitely pleased him. The esportsman showed a very good performance during the whole championship and managed to finish participation in the championship with the rating of 1,24 which let him get higher than his teammates.
We should not ignore cadiaN, a member of the winning team. The Danish player must be the only gamer that came back from the analytical activity. Gamers usually finish their esports career and switch to commenting or analysis of tournaments. But cadiaN decided to come back to gaming and now he shows great results. What we can only say about the decisive round played at ESL Pro League Season 13. Kapser ‘cadiaN’ Møller decided to stab sh1ro to get money for AWP at the decisive round, and alongside killed three more opponents. The moment was so bright and interesting that the commenters who were watching the meeting said that “cadiaN passed CS:GO”, even though this victory did not happen at the Major tournament.
However, it is better to see this once than to read about it 100 times.
NAVI and MIBR. Backstage games
These two teams are featured at least in two highlights that happened at the event.
At first, Natus Vincere and MIBR gained an audience favourite prize, as their battle at ESL Pro League Season 13 became the most browsed. The teams managed to attract over 400,000 spectators at the peak which the participants in the grand finale were unable to do. NAVI has a large fanbase in the whole world and MIBR is very popular in Brazil. Therefore, the battle between Natus Vincere and MIBR, which happened in the fourth round of the group stage, was the most browsable.
“Born to Win” and “Made in Brazil” were involved in another story that was also quite unusual and funny. After the match between NAVI and MIBR, “Born to Win” were in a situation where NAVI could make it to the next stage of the championship and fight for the right to become the best at ESL Pro League Season 13 in case of MIBR’s victory. The Brazilians needed special motivation to win. Kirill ‘Boombl4’ Mikhailov decided to accept his capitain spirits and took the solution of the problem upon himself and addressed Boltz from MIBR with an interesting offer which Ricardo Prass could not reject. Kirill said that if boltz tried hard and MIBR beat Cloud9 at the upcoming battle and NAVI won ESL Pro Season 13, Boombl4 would get a tattoo with Ricardo Prass’ nickname on his arm. This kind of offer was interesting for boltz so he destroyed his rivals and Natus Vincere managed to proceed to the next stage of the tournament.
By the way, after Cloud9 lost a battle with MIBR, the team reported about their temporary leave away from CS:GO. “How soon are they coming back?” — you ask, “After the end of the lockdown” — answers the management of the club. To put it another way, Cloud9 are not going to return to the shooting discipline yet. But the beginning was interesting, do you remember how C9 spent several millions on their CS:GO roster?
Returning to NAVI and MIBR, “Born to Win”, despite all efforts of the brazilian players, they ended their participation at the first round of the playoff. A part of audience that appreciates delicate humour does not forget to note a fact of the agreement between Boombl4 and boltz, and associates this event with NAVI’s bad results. Natus Vincere still finished participating in ESL Pro League Season 13 with 9th-12th place which resulted in a monetary reward of $25,000.
Fabulous comeback from Virtus.pro
Something happened at the match between Complexity Gaming and Virtus.pro and now it can be praised in songs of esports bards. There is a good reason why the industry representatives say that the CIS is known not only for NAVI. Gambit Esports are great, however, Virtus.pro could definitely leave their trace in the CS:GO history. When the team was losing Dust 2 with 3-15, and the scoreboard showed 1-1, everyone said goodbye to Jame and his teammates. The latter did not like the taste of loss, so the team decided to make an incredible comeback. The gamers won one round after another, and then won overtimes. Therefore, Virtus.pro became the first team in the world that made a comeback from 3-15 on Dust 2. By the way, no one out of 289 participants could do the same in this situation. The team showed strong will which could not be equal to them.
Results
Strong-willed matches, beautiful shows, bread and circuses — that’s what we could get from watching VP’s matches, but from the championship in total. If you missed ESL Pro League Season 13 but you like watching high-quality CS:GO, you missed a lot.
- 1 place: Heroic — $200,000 + an invite to BLAST Premier Global Finals 2021
- 2 place: Gambit Esports — $85,000
- 3-4 place: FURIA Esports — $45,000
- 3-4 place: NiP — $50,000
- 5-6 place: Astralis — $35,000
- 5-6 place: Complexity Gaming — $30,000
- 7-8 place: G2 Esports — $27,500
- 7-8 place: Virtus.pro — $27,500
- 9-12 place: FPX Esports — $25,000
- 9-12 place: Team Liquid — $30,000
- 9-12 place: NAVI — $25,000
- 9-12 place: ENCE — $25,000
- 13-16 place: OG — $17,000
- 13-16 place: Team Vitality — $17,000
- 13-16 place: MIBR — $17,000
- 13-16 place: Team Endpoint — $17,000
- 17-20 place: Renegades — $10,000
- 17-20 place: FaZe Clan — $10,000
- 17-20 place: Cloud9 — $10,000
- 17-20 place: Fnatic — $10,000
- 21-24 place: BIG — $8,000
- 21-24 place: mousesports — $8,000
- 21-24 place: Team One — $8,000
- 21-24 place: Evil Geniuses — $8,000