Review of BLAST Premier Global Final 2020
Ihor MatusOn 24 January, another CS:GO championship, BLAST Premier Global Final 2020, was completed. The overall sum of the prize money was $1,000,000, and the main monetary prize was $600,000 which is a record for the online format.
As a reminder, initially the organizers were going to set the prize pool of $1,500,000 at the tournament, and the main win would be $1,000,000, however, due to the switch to the quarantine mode a part of the prize money was spent on other BLAST Premier tournaments and and the money was also used to support teams.
Apart from the outcome of the final battle of the tournament, the championship was more or less predictable. The favs performed as well as we expected and Top-3 participants of our preview made it to Top-3 of the tournament bracket. The only thing that we could not foresee about the favourites — the grand final without the French players from Team Vitality and a rather weak game from Astralis at the final battle.
First to leave
Complexity Gaming and FURIA Esports were the first teams to get overboard of the tournament ship called BLAST Premier Global Final 2020. At the lower part of the bracket FURIA Esports could not beat Evil Geniuses while Complexity Gaming lost a fight with Natus Vincere. Both meetings were played with the score of 1-2, so we cannot call any of the teams a discredited loser. Their work at the event resulted in consolation prizes of $15,000.
It is remarkable that at the moment of leaving the championship FURIA had the best statistics of all participants. We have gone into details of this issue and found out why it did not help the team to show a rather bad performance at the championship. If your missed our article, you can find it here .
Team Liquid + FalleN
At the tournament bracket we expected to see Team Liquid at the 5-6 position, and G2 Esports had to take the fourth place. The reason lies in the fact that Liquid’s lineup has been reshuffled recently. The management decided to find an interesting solution for the vacant spot of Twistzz who has recently left the roster. This position is taken by the Brazilian legionnaire Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo. Actually, it was expected by some fans of FalleN and Liquid, however, this solution is extraordinary as it would be more typical to take FalleN on the captain’s post, but he became a regular sniper. We remember how at SK Gaming the Brazilian combined a sniper gun in his hands and important decisions with coordination of the team in his mind. This time when the gamer joined Team Liquid he tweeted that the in-game leader’s position will be taken by Stewie2k just because he is the best. And, as we could see, this solution was fruitful. At his debut battle against NAVI, Team Liquid showed a great game and did not lose any map at the fight with “Born to Win”. After that the team could not beat one of the main favourites, Vitality, but later the players could not deal with Evil Geniuses’s power at the lower bracket, however, it was interesting and unusual to look at FalleN as a Liquid member. Fans were very satisfied with such collaboration as the Brazilian did not show a great result in his team when the gamers were fighting with Vitality. Playing against EG, he took third place in his team.
G2 Esports
As for G2 Esports, these esportsmen made their fans disappointed. They did not leave them without spectacular show, but, nevertheless, it was upsetting. At the first bracket they faced some problems but defeated FURIA Esports. The Europeans lost one map to the team that had been assembled right before the start of the tournament. Besides, the Brazilian team was represented by an esportsman with a rather poor experience of performing on the professional stage, honda. After the battle with FURIAm the gamers moved on and who did they see next? Astralis. G2 fought with them well and won one map, but, unfortunately for the Europeans, the match with FURIA was the only victorious match at BLAST Premier Global Final 2020 for the players. After the defeat by Astralis by the score of 1-2 G2 dropped down to the lower bracket and surprised everybody at the fight with NAVI, as they did not win any map there. In the end, G2 as well as Evil Geniuses got placed at the 5-6 position at the tournament bracket and got $20,000. Frankly speaking, we expected almost the same from EG, however, we cannot say it about G2.
ZywOo is good, but not enough for winning the tournament
Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut is definitely a good gamer. Great. The best according to HLTV in 2019 and 2020. However, this honourable status for the esportsman was not enough to make it to the grand final and this is what we were waiting from the French players. The team started with a victory over Complexity Gaming with the score of 2-0 and continued with another predictable victory over Team Liquid with analogous results. Fans of the French team held their breath when they had to compete with Astralis and their stir was not in vain. Vitality managed to win one map but in the end the gamers lost and dropped down to the lower bracket where they fought at a kind of el clasico. All fans of esports came to see the principal battle between ZywOo and s1mple. This meeting had the biggest number of views in comparison with other online matches in the CS:GO history, and also got to the third position among all not Major tournament battles. The match was watched by over 650,000 spectators simultaneously and it was very intriguing as it has to be. On the first map, the gamers had to define the winner at the extra series of rounds and Nuke ended up with 19-17 in favour for NAVI and on Overpass Vitality managed to draw the meeting losing 12 rounds to NAVI. Hoping for a good result, Nivera substituted for misutaaa on Dust 2, however, it did not help — Vitality won 10 rounds and finished participating in the championship being one step away from the grand final. The third place at the tournament bracket resulted in $80,000 for Vitality, and ZywOo was acknowledged as one of the best gun users of the championship. He was rated 2.22 by HLTV playing with this kind of weapon.
By the way, Vitality was fined $10,000, as ESIC caught the French gamers with stream-sniping. Violation of rules was fixed on 11 November last year at the matches against Team Liquid and Complexity Gaming. According to the committee of fair practice in esports there was a stream of matches behind the gamers, but the video cameras could not fix it, so the gamers were imposed with a fine only. As a result, the sum prize of the French gamers was $70,000 instead of $80,000.
Astralis vs NAVI
And, of course, one of the most interesting battles was the final meeting of BLAST Premier Global Final 2020 where the titans of CS:GO, Astralis and NAVI. met up. Many viewers were sure that “Born to Win” would not be able to prove their tag and win next time. Surprisingly, Astralis was unable to win any map from NAVI and all intrigue had disappeared by the second half of the second map. Let’s pay attention to the fact that on Inferno B1T performed instead of flamie and showed a pretty good result and even gave his viewers several highlights. But as for the case with Astralis the substitution strategy did not work when Bubzkji fought on Nuke instead of Xyp9x. By the way, without the clutch minister, the Danish players showed a better result. If on the first map they could make their opponents sweat and wob 12 rounds from Natus Vincere, on Inferno they were unable to win more than 5 rounds, losing with 0-2.
Silver finalists, Astralis, got a monetary reward of $200,000, but Natus Vincere, who won the championship, gained the biggest prize of all online CS:GO tournaments. More considerable prize money in the history of this discipline was earned only twice: wins over Team EnVyUs at WESG 2016 and Fnatic at WESG 2017 brought $800,000 to both teams.
HLTV collected all statistics of the gamers and showed five best esportsmen that performed at BLAST Premier Global Final 2020. There are three gamers from NAVI: s1mple, Perfecto, and Boombl4.
S1mple got a status "Star" as the gamer with the highest rating (1.41). Perfecto became the best dueler as he showed a great performance at the played situations 1vs1 (9 times or 87,5% of successful duels). Boombl4 was acknowledged for his entry frags so his rating was 1.19 among all esportsmen who played as entry fraggers (0.16 open frags for a round).
Interesting fact: B1T played 10 matches in his career and four of them happened at BLAST Premier Global Final 2020. The 18-year-old Valerii Vakhovskyi spent his previous 6 meetings under the NAVI Junior tag and this tournament was the first event where the gamer played under the Natus Vincere tag. Taking into account the size of the tournament, the level of participants and the sum and division of the prize money and the prize gained by the winner, B1T’s debut truly deserves to be called successful.