Today is the first day that people can get into Multiplay’s i55 Gaming Festival. With the main event starting tomorrow the 28th, many attendees will be setting their computers up to get ready for the events on this coming weekend. Here’s a look towards the CS:GO event this weekend.
The tournament itself has a £7500 prize pool, boosted by sponsorship from Roccat, and features an open bracket so that teams will start to get knocked out from the beginning to the end. For those knocked out, however, there will be an intermediates tournament for you to take part in so the fun doesn’t stop too quickly. The first prize place will pick up the lion’s share of the pool, at £3,750, and second will take £1,500.
There is set to be 70 teams attending the CS:GO event – the most out of all the tournaments at i55 and the most in recent memory at an iSeries event. Out of these teams there are set to be some big names in the scene, including Choke Gaming, as well as the powerhouses of Team Infused and EZSKINS. This will be the first LAN event that this new EZSKINS line-up will attend together and after qualifying for DreamHack Open London recently this will be a show of what they could be bringing to the table come September. Choke also lost against EZSKINS in the DreamHack qualifiers, but as a line-up they have most recently won epic.15 which featured teams such as fish123, CAZ eSports and a Molotovs and Marshmallows mix. Two of those teams (fish123 and CAZ) won’t be in attendance at i55 and the core of that MnM mix side will be here as well, also backed up with the Canadian Josh “steel” Nissan and James “Kryptix” Affleck. The other side that should be near the top are the well known Team Infused. Infused will be attending without their new addition of Phil “Whindanski” Nicholas who’s had to have jaw surgery recently so is unable to talk effectively. He will be replaced by the Swede Robin “robiin” Sjögren , once again linking up with former teammates.
It’s also worth noting that the CeX side has Jonathan “SHEEKEY” Sheekey and Victor “mvicK” Meulendijks standing in for their foreign players Philipp “osirisbash“ Kaczmarczyk and Simon “cleMeNz0” Jensen, and Curse These Metal Hands has Craig “onscreen” Shannon replacing Ollie “crazycat” Netherton.
Our top-10 UKCSGO seedings for i55, based off of our most recent rankings and form heading into the tournament, go like this:
- Choke Gaming (Immi, Peggy, MiGHTYMAX, Esio, Powell)
- EZSKINS (weber, RattlesnK, Puls3, fearLess, mole)
- Team Infused (Aaron, ZED, robiin, KritikaL, redSNK)
- Molotovs and Marshmallows (steel, vertiGo, Kryptix, b3n, roma)
- CeX (Sheekey, resu, AndrewisGod, chron1c, mvicK)
- Reason.UK (kARMA, fisher, CINDER, Surreal, Jonny)
- uFrag (adamxoxo, bunny, HyPeizback, ollie, Mitch)
- Curse These Metal Hands (mortism, onscreen, benkofk, boaster, quiver)
- Rasta Gaming (jagg, gsr, phantasy, orcl, atlantis)
- LEAVEITYEAH (logaN., Mattye, Kazuki, Jacky, JZFB)
This tournament will also help base what this month’s top 10 will be, so on top of i55’s £7500 prize pool it’s all to play for.
