The CS:GO Tournament has come to a climatic close. After three full days of compelling Counter-Strike action, it finally has come to the close. We finally get to see who wins the biggest share of £7,500 with some massive shocks, and some great underdog stories once again.
It all started on Friday afternoon, and for probably the first time at an iSeries event, things actually kicked off on time, so massive kudos to the admins and people behind the scenes at Multiplay who managed to make this feasible (Should also shoutout to Valve too for not releasing a game breaking patch just on the weekend of LAN). For the majority of Day 1, it was plain sailing for all the major seeds in each of the groups. Of course, CAZ eSports & fm-eSports were granted Seeds 1 & 2 due to their performances online in the Multiplay UK Masters League with Best-Of-Two format. They both then navigated their way through playoffs to make the Grand Final at LAN. As they were participating in UK Masters they skipped the group stage.
With that said, it left the admins with a difficult format to navigate (one that many players have criticised openly on Social Media) with fourteen groups of five or six teams. This meant with a bracket size of 16, and 2 teams not involved until then, that the admins could only give 1 team go through the groups. Many players state they never knew this until the group stages had concluded, however we had mentioned this was the possibility on our very own viewers guide prior to LAN. Whether communication can be solved by admins between them and teams is another matter for another day.
The biggest shock of Day 1 was eBGaming_ who managed to take a 16:12 result against Romanian outfit XPC.gg, which was later overturned due to a lack of POVs. It caused great drama and problems until XPC.gg asked to re-match Ashley “ashhh” Battye and co. It meant that due to the ensuing controversy, they had to face the Romanian’s on a different map, and they soon went down 16:3 to XPC.
Jon “ViciousHorizion” Kelly…. giving it a thumbs up!
Other teams managed to get through Groups with relative ease, hardly getting pushed. We should note that the great system between the final four seeds where 8 teams were grouped together to decide those final four seeds in groups, was an impressive system that helped alleviate the problem usually in seeding teams at UK events. Teams such as Team XENEX, True Esports were both booted out of the group stage by this new system, and meant they had to settle for Intermediate Tournament.
Day One concluded with a few close contests coming about, Team uFrag were put to the sword by Enemies In Disbelief who really impressed us here at UKCSGO.com with some cool plays, and sick clutch situations. Meanwhile The Last Resort were tested incredibly well by other relative UK Underdogs (who have been doing well in ESL UK Prem Qualifiers) called IGI.eSports, it was the first Overtime of the LAN event, but TLR did manage to squeeze through that encounter. In the final games of the day, both Bulldog eSports & Radix eSports managed to give some rather great matches against the top two seeds. Both teams may of been left bemused that they didn’t quite get the win they wanted, but they showed some great plays against the top two seeds.
Day Two started with a bit of a bang as we saw the biggest shock in the tournament thus far, as fm-eSports were put down into the Lower Bracket by Enemies In Disbelief. It was a massive blow to the boys from fm-eSports, but they’ve done it before from the Lower Bracket, they have the experience to do it again. Enemies In Disbelief were literally in disbelief at that result, but they proved incredibly good at this event and continued to take down some of the “bigger names”.
Upsets and underdogs were the two big themes of the day in Day two as Team uFrag were beaten once again in the Lower Bracket, this time by Bulldog eSports, who back at epic.EIGHTEEN were under the tag of Impulse Gaming and finished 7th/8th at that event when they lost to Perilous.Fury at that event (who have later become TLR.eSports). It was an impressive performance from the boys in Bulldog colours as they showed great composure to see out the map despite Team uFrag pulling it back in the latter stages of the match.
It’s a bit of a fall from grace for Team CeX colours, as back at insomnia56 they had rode high by winning the entire event in a surprising form, however the new rebranded lineup in recent weeks were in very dodgy form as they had struggled to breakthrough the ESL UK Premiership Qualifiers, and ended up not even qualifying for the Promotions Tournament there. Here it has been a similar story, they breezed groups, although as we didn’t catch many of their groups we are unaware of how well they did in each of their respective games. However Elimination stages and they were incredibly poor, so much so that whilst we should count it as a shock, they were beaten by a team full of confidence, nerdRage.Pro in the Lower Bracket after being beaten by one of the better sides in the competition in the form of Winners. It was unfortunate, but not too much of a shock for the guys. They will as always bounce back from this.
As Day Two went on, the Upper Bracket Final was a bit of a whitewash between the Romanian team XPC.gg who won 16:3 & 16:4 over two maps against the Natural UK Mix team of Team Infused. Brandon “Weber” Weber and co couldn’t really muster up any kind of showing in those two maps with Brandon hardly making any impact with a score of 0-1-7 at one point. Shortly after that defeat, there were some heated words exchanged on Twitter from Neil “Neil_M” Murphy after he felt victimised by the UKCSGO Twitter account. It wasn’t the greatest of matches from the UK team, but it did show that XPC.gg were not to be messed around with as they really put on the kind of performance you would expect from Champions-elect.
Meanwhile the lower bracket was heating up incredibly as Winners led by Ben “r0m” Smith and featured players such as Fabien“kioShiMa” Fiey managed to place fm-eSports in their worst position they’ve had in the entirety of their CS:GO history at iSeries. Neil “nEiLZHiNHo” Finlay managed to take to Twitter today and basically sum up fm-eSports performance after they were beaten 16:8 & 16:8. It’s a long road back for the fm-eSports guys, and they will be certainly reflecting on their performance here at iSeries.
In the other game, it was Enemies In Disbelief who continued to deliver shock after shock after shock as they claimed another scalp on their way, with Rize Gaming, who had been looking not too bad during the event as Jonathon “Sheekey” Sheekey kept rolling back the years in previous games. However it was Enemies In Disbelief who were just being the more superior side in keeping mistakes to a minimum. They managed to beat Rize Gaming 16:12 & 16:13 respectively and move on to play CAZ eSports in the Lower Bracket Final.
CAZ eSports weren’t really lighting the world on fire with their performances, however many people had them pegged as one of the favourites heading into LAN and of course, despite being knocked to the lower bracket by XPC.gg (who had really stormed it in those two maps too), CAZ for the most part had looked untroubled by Team Winners, and once again in the final match of the night of Day 2, they had looked every bit superior as the EiD team looked a bit out of gas, and low on ideas. It was a bit of a poor finale to the day, as CAZ won 16:4 & 16:7 respectively to set up a meeting with Team Infused the next day.
Day Three saw CAZ eSports & Team Infused go head to head for the first time in the tournament. Once again, it delivered what you would expect from a UK match, dust2 going towards the Mix team, train going towards the “team” and then the final map decider which ended up going all 30 rounds in a nail biting encounter till the final two rounds were finally claimed by the mix. That’s right Infused managed to set up a re-match against the Romanians by beating CAZ over our first official three map series, 16:11, 4:16, 16:14. It was close, it was enjoyable, and it was good to watch.
The Grand Final will be covered in more detail, however it delivered in a big way, as it went the entire distance with an Overtime in Map 1, a close map in Map 2, then two rather lopsided maps in contrasting fashion. However XPC.gg will walk away technically undefeated from the tournament, and champions of insomnia58. An incredible achievement for a team who came from Romania.
Final Standings
| Pos | Team Name | Prize Money |
| 1st | XPC.gg (5) (WHiTE, Seminte, xellow, COSMEEEN, sXe) | £3,750 |
| 2nd | Team Infused (2) (Puls3, Weber, conoR, Aaron, MightyMax) | £1,500 |
| 3rd | CAZ eSports (1) (jakem, robiin, tsack, Kryptix, Boaster) | £900 |
| 4th | Enemies In Disbelief (10) (Logzi, Danceyz, ajay, Jenko, JDD) | £450 |
| 5th – 6th | Rize Gaming (4) (SHEEKEY, shaney, Peggyyyyy, JT, Immi) | £225 |
| 5th – 6th | Winners (6) (Kioshima, r0m, smooya, Brodyyyy, onscreenlol) | £225 |
| 7th – 8th | The Last Resort (8) (SpeedyG, ALIG, paynt, hoodlum, dUdLeY) | £225 |
| 7th – 8th | fm-eSports (2) (Whindanski, socN, nEiLZHiNHo, hudzG, CINDER) | £225 |
| Pos | Team Name | Prize Money |
| 9th – 12th | nerdRage.Pro (14) (Caspian, Cynic, HVM, LS, Samwell) | N/A |
| 9th – 12th | TCA.Esports (13) (pickles, nipXe, Zeo, FrankstaH, xfp) | N/A |
| 9th – 12th | Bulldog eSports (15) (Thomas, wafu, Nukeddog, Luzuh, kplus) | N/A |
| 9th – 12th | Radix eSports (16) (m1sfit, celld, adam, claw, kray) | N/A |
| 13th – 16th | Millwall Bushwackers (12) (velox, Alex, Wong, prezzy, Shanked) | N/A |
| 13th – 16th | Team CeX (11) (Resu, Chronic, EB, AndrewIsGod, Rob4) | N/A |
| 13th – 16th | Team uFrag (7) (Adamxoxo, Esio, HypeIzBack, Jak3y, Snodz) | N/A |
| 13th – 16th | IGI.eSports (9) (Skuxz, Plasmaz, Philo, WADDY, Archer) | N/A |
*Please Note: Seedings shown in Brackets
In the Intermediate Tournament, it was Italian team True Esports featuring Guglielmo “GUGLi” Carraro who went unbeaten in the tournament who managed to win the Grand Final in that against Millwall Bushwackers. Some might suggest that had True Esports been allowed a better pairing in the group stages, they could have made Top 16 in the main tournament. Unlucky for them though, but great for the Intermediate teams who got an interesting team to play against. For the full final standings please read it on the CSGO UK Subreddit.
Coverage Re-Cap
Pre-Event
Pre-insomnia58: An interview with…. Jakem
Pre-insomnia58: An interview with…. SpeedyG
Pre-insomnia58: An interview with…. Cthreestar
insomnia58: The Viewers Guide
Day 1 Coverage
insomnia58: The Seedings
insomnia58: The Groups
insomnia58: The GOTVs
insomnia58: The Romanian Controversy
insomnia58: UK Masters Finals (includes Final Standings)
insomnia58: Day 1 Wrap
Day 2 Coverage
insomnia58: Elimination Bracket
insomnia58: Intermediate Tournament Elimination Bracket
Finals Day Coverage
insomnia58: The Grand Final (yet to be done)
insomnia58: Final Standings
Hopefully everyone has enjoyed our coverage throughout this weekend, please make sure you follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to keep in the know with everything related to the UK CS:GO Scene
After that brilliant weekend, next UK LAN event is epic.NINETEEN on the weekend of October 13th – 16th, you can still book tickets here, with only 125 tickets remaining, you won’t want to miss out on another weekend of glorious banter and incredible Counter-Strike.
