The third official CS:GO Minor will run this weekend, hosted by ESL and featuring teams of Asia and Oceania playing for $50,000 and two spots at the offline qualifiers for the upcoming Major i.e. MLG Columbus Main Qualifier. The winner of this Minor will secure a spot in IEM Katowice 2016 which holds a prize pool of $250,000.
The Asian Minor, hosted by ESL, is next up from January 29 to February 1 and it features eight teams split up into two groups of four, from which teams will play a double elimination group format (Decider match being best-of-three) and four teams will then move into a single elimination, best-of-three playoffs.
The group draw for the event is:
Group A Group B CyberZen Renegades MVP.Karnal TyLoo Chiefs MongolZ Risky Gaming Eat You Alive
The lineups of all Group A, and a short examination into their histories, can be found below:
CyberZen
Image Courtesy : HLTV
CyberZen, an invited Chinese team featuring 3 players from QeeYou and two Counter-Strike Veterans. Their line-up is as follows,
Zhuo ” advent ” Liang
BingYuan ” tb ” Li
Bin ” Savage ” Liu
WeiJie ” zhokiNg ” Zhong
ZhiHong ” uki ” Liu
CyberZen has had a strong run in the Asian Scene by qualifying for SL i-League StarSeries XIV Lan finals and winning some of the top online events like SoStronk Challenger – Asia #1 and SoStronk KOTH – Asia #2. Their recent achievement was taking off a map against Gamers2 (now FaZe), one of the best European team in SL i-League StarSeries XIV Lan finals.
Bin ” Savage ” Liu
Going into this group, CyberZen are the Asian favourites to win this event with only the Australian Giants bothering them. CyberZen, in the past have shown some massive results against MVP.Karnal with their star player Bin ” Savage ” Liu stepping up in both online and offline events.
MVP.Karnal
MVP.Karnal at ESL One: Cologne Asia Qualifiers
MVP.Karnal, the top Malaysian team, has been stable with their players. Their line-up is as follows,
Alex ” xevR ” Pereira
Aiman ” aimaNNN ” Azham
Syahrir ” izzatR ” Izzat
Ashraf ” acAp ” Firdaus
Andrew ” kaze ” Khong
MVP.Karnal has represented at many CS:GO events like ESL One: Cologne Asia Qualifiers, Dreamhack Asian Qualifiers. Their previous notable achievements are-
1st at ESL One: Cologne 2015 Malaysia Qualifier, 1st at Malaysia Cyber Games 2015, 1st at BenQ All-Star Showmatch, 2nd at SoStronk Challenger – Asia #1, 3rd at ESL One: Cologne 2015 Asia Offline Qualifier. The recent results of MVP.Karnal haven’t been satisfying for them.
MVP.Karnal will have some tough time in the group stage.
Going into this group, they’ll have tough games competing against Chiefs, CyberZen and Risky Gaming with the latter being the least experienced. Andrew ” kaze ” Khong and Ashraf ” acAp ” Firdaus being the star players have a big role for their team to go ahead in the event.
Chiefs
Chiefs having a bootcamp prior to the event. (Image Courtesy : Twitter )
Chiefs are the second Australian team to qualify for this event after Renegades battling it out against Team Immunity in the IEM Taipei ANZ Qualifier Finals to emerge victorious after three long maps (19-17, 6-16, 16-9) to win an all-expense paid trip to Taipei. Their line-up is as follows,
Michael ” Lightstep ” Hall
Christopher ” dexter ” Nong
Callum ” burnruok ” Henderson
Ryan ” zewsy ” Palmer (stand-in)
Azad ” topguN ” Orami (stand-in)
Chiefs stood 4th in both CounterPit league Ocenia Region, FaceIt League 2015 Stage-3. They stood 1st in the closed qualifiers of Ocenia Region FaceIt League. They had a surprise win against Team Immunity in the Taipei qualifiers.
Azad ” topguN ” Orami is now set to make a one-off appearance for Chiefs
Going into the group, they’ll have to battle it out hard against CyberZen and MVP.Karnal. Chiefs will be keen to continue their surprise run in this event. Chiefs with two stand-ins will make it a tough job for them to fight out against other teams, but having Azad ” topguN ” Orami in their lineup increases the fire-power on which they can rely on.
Risky Gaming
Risky gaming needs to put a lot of effort. ( Image Courtesy : Facebook )
Risky Gaming,one of the top Dubai team will be a surprise element in this event having little to know international experience. Their line-up is as follows,
Abdulaziz “Nami ” Ibrahim
Khalid ” KarriBob ” Aljunaibi
Obaid ” breAker ” Almuhairi
Mohammed ” k1tkat ” Alnuaimi
Love ” havoK ” Paras
havoK has a big role.
Going into the group, Risky Gaming being the underdogs might upset the teams with their quality team-work. IEM Taipei being their first international event as a team has a lot of eyes looking at them.
The Group B preview will be posted tomorrow.
By : Vallabh Ram
Tags: Chiefs CS:GO Cyberzen ESL IEM IEM IEM Taipei IEM Taipei Preview MVP.KarnaL CS:GO Risky Gaming
[…] discussing about the Group A yesterday, going into the next group,it is no less than the first group with Power packed games […]