Last weekend, 72 teams battled it out in CyberPowerPC’s first ever, CS:GO Pro Gaming Series. The matches played over the weekend was the first qualifier for the main event, taking place in August. The main event will feature some of the best North and South American teams being invited to compete for a $15,000 prize pool. Some invited teams include previous major winners, Luminosity Gaming, and hometown favorites, Cloud 9. The first qualifier featured a $2,500 prize pool with the first place team getting the coveted spot in the main event. It took place from Saturday, May 28th with the Preliminary Bracket and finished on Sunday, May 29th with the Championship Bracket. It should also be noted that the seeding for this tournament was random with the open teams being given random teams and the invited teams being seeded randomly also. All the matches were played online on the CEVO client.
The Preliminary (Open) Bracket: Link
For this qualifier, we allowed any team that wanted to participate to register, with the first 64 teams registered being given a priority. Teams who just missed the 64th cut-off were placed in the wait list in case any of the teams did not show up on the day of the tournament. Some of the teams the more well known teams in the preliminary bracket included the third best Brazilian team, WinOut, Team Rival, and several other teams. The preliminary bracket included a loser’s bracket so teams were given a second chance if they lost their first game. The four teams that made it through the winner’s bracket were Team Rival, Horizon Union, WinOut, and Vizion. This left the remaining teams to fight it out in the loser’s bracket with Broken Alliance, AfterLife Revolution, vitriol, and Legacy eSports claiming the last four spots to join the other four teams in the championship bracket on Sunday.
The Championship Bracket: Link
Eight teams were invited to the qualifiers and were placed in the championship bracket along with the eight teams that qualified from the preliminary bracket. The eight teams that were invited were Team Kaliber, Tectonic, Team ProspectsGG, lost, Noble e-Sport, VAULT, Team SoloMid, and Splyce. Each of the invited teams were paired with a qualified team. In the Round of 16, two of the invited teams fell with Team Rival defeating Noble e-Sport and Broken Alliance taking down VAULT. Because of how the bracket was arranged, this allowed both qualified teams to play each other in the quarterfinals and guarantee that one of them would be through to the semis. Team Rival triumphed 2-1 over Broken Alliance and moved on to play TSM who beat Splyce. On the other side of the bracket, Team Kaliber defeated Tectonic in a hard fought three games while Team ProspectsGG defeated lost 2-0.
The semifinals were broadcasted on CyberPowerPC’s Twitch channel with the first game being between Team Kaliber and Team ProspectsGG. The three maps in the series were Overpass, Mirage, and Train if needed. ProspectsGG started off with a brilliant defense on Overpass taking the half 13-2 and completely shutting down the Kaliber offense. It looked like they would clean up the map relatively easily until Kaliber answered back with a streak of 7 rounds to close the distance a bit before ProspectsGG grabbed their first round. Another set of streaks completed the comeback for Kaliber as they tied up the score at 15-15 to take the match into overtime. From there, they continued their momentum from the second half to win 19-16. The second map started off with Kaliber pushing ahead to a stellar 9-6 half on the Terrorist side of Mirage. Despite a pistol round loss, they converted the second force-buy round to ease themselves up to 7 match points. However, ProspectsGG weren’t done yet, grabbing a streak of 5 rounds of their own before a 2 vs 3 win by Kaliber propelled them to the finals.
The second match in the semifinals was between Team SoloMid and Team Rival. Unfortuantely for Rival, they were up against one of the top North American teams, but they still managed to put up respective scores in the two games. On the first map Dust II, TSM roared ahead to a 13-2 score and eased up on the gas pedal a bit before ending the game 16-8. Overpass proceeded in much of the same way with TSM quickly getting a 14-4 scoreline before Rival went on a 7 rounds winning streak to close the gap to 3 rounds before TSM finished up the game.
The maps for the grand finals were Mirage, Dust II, and Cobblestone. Mirage, the choice of Team Kaliber, was the first map of the series and after a closely contested first half, Kaliber’s pistol win in the second half brought the score to 9-8 in favor of TSM. A flurry of rounds from the TSM side brought them up to match point before they allowed Kaliber to go on a mini-streak of their own. Finally, TSM closed out the game after allowing Kaliber to grab 13 rounds. The second map was a wash for TSM, storming out to a 12-3 lead and only because they lost the second half pistol were Kaliber allowed to get 6 rounds. In the end, TSM were the champions of CyberPowerPC’s first qualifier and move on to the main event for a shot at a lion’s share of $15,000.
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