This week’s hottest eSports news and highlights for League of Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2, and Overwatch. Expect spoilers! Brackets from TeamLiquid.
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eSports Weekly 09/05/16
NA LCS Regional Qualifiers
With TSM's victory in the NA LCS Finals last week, two of the three NA spots to Worlds have been taken. TSM has the first seed by winning the Summer Split and CLG qualified by having the most points from winning the Spring Split. The last spot is determined by a final tournament - the regional qualifiers.
The regional qualifiers is in a gauntlet format where the lowest seeds play each other and the winner advances to face the next highest seed. The first match was between Team Envy and Team Liquid. Due to Team Liquid's dismissal of their star player Dardoch, the series was a stomp with Team Envy taking the series 3-0. Advancing to the next round, Team Envy then played Cloud9 where they were also swept 3-0. Now Cloud9 and Immortals are both one series away from qualifying for Worlds. Both teams had an incredibly close series in the semifinals and the match should be extremely close.
EU LCS Regional Qualifiers
Last week, G2 Esports won the EU LCS Summer Split qualifying them for Worlds. With this victory, H2k has also qualified from championship points for the second seed for worlds. With the top two spots taken, the remaining teams played in the regional qualifiers to earn the final spot into Worlds.
The first match was between Giants and Unicorns of Love where UOL won 3-0 in a clean sweep. The Unicorns continued their momentum in the next round against Fnatic where they also swept them 3-0. With this win, the Unicorns will play in the final series against Splyce for the final spot at Worlds.
LCK Recap and Standings
With the ROX Tigers winning the Finals, both the ROX Tigers and SKTelecom T1 have qualified to return to Worlds. This week, LCK also had their regional qualifiers to see who will take the final spot for worlds. In the first round, the Afreeca Freecs beat Jin Air Green Wings 3-2 in a close series. With this win, Afreeca faced Samsung Galaxy where Samsung was able to win 3-1. In the final series, Samsung faced KT Rolster, a team who was tragically beaten in the fifth game of the LCK Summer Finals due to unfortunate Baron steal. In a nail-biting close series, Samsung was able to beat KT Rolster 3-2 qualifying them for Worlds. While unbelievably tragic for KT, this is a special moment for Samsung given that Ambition, Samsung's jungler, has finally qualified for Worlds after so many years. Furthermore, Samsung has demonstrated their prowess for management given that after the Korean Exodus they have rebuilt a team of rejects and has-beens to be a Worlds qualifying team in the most competative region in the world.
UOL vs Giants insane Deficio prediction
Impact 1v2
Ambition's beautiful outplay
Worlds Qualifying Play for INTZ
INTZ VENCE LUTA NO MEIO! - IWCQ 2016
Jensen legit trolls his team
StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 2
The StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 2 is a tournament organized by SLTV that involves a NA, EU, and CN qualifier. With a prize pool of $300,000, the main tournament takes place from September 7-11th.
The NA and EU Qualifiers have finished with OpTic Gaming defeating Cloud9 2-1 and Immortals beating Renegades 2-0 to both qualify. For EU, Team Dignitas, Team X, and Team EnVyUs have all qualified for the main tournament.
These are the participants:
- Astralis
- GODSENT
- G2 Esports
- HellRaisers
- Natus Vincere
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- Virtus.pro
- TyLoo (China #1-2)
- Vg.CyberZen (China #1-2)
- MVP Project (China #3)
- Team Dignitas (Europe #1-2)
- Heroic (Europe #1-2, formerly players of Team X)
- Team EnVyUs (Europe #3)
- Optic Gaming (North America #1-2)
- Immortals (North America #1-2)
ESL Pro League Season 4
The fourth season of the ESL Pro League has started in both Europe and North America. This premier tournament runs from August 17 to October 13 to the finals in Brazil from October 28-30. The Finals involves a $750,000 USD prize pool and the top four seeds from EU and NA respectively.
ESL Pro League EU Standings & Results
ESL Pro League NA Standings & Results
USTILO 1v3 + ACE
CSGO - USTILO 1v3 + ACE
Autimatic inhuman reactions
There it is Dan!
Friberg 4k
NiP F0rest with the running one tap
Russian caster goes crazy
Russian caster goes crazy
n0thing 4K Spraydown
CSGO - n0thing EZ 4K Spraydown
The World Cyber Arena is a major tournament that will take place in Yinchuan, China from December 12-18th. The EU Main Qualifiers are currently going on with a prize pool of $54,500 and two seeds in the main event on the line.
The teams who played for qualification were:
- Alliance
- Vega Squadron
- Team Empire
- Elements One
- Escape Gaming
- Fantastic Five
- Ad Finem
- Kaipi
Here's how the tournament went down:
Kaipi was able to win the Main Event and take home $27,140 USD and the top seed for the main event. Vega Squadron won second place and won $13,570 and the second seed.
Kaipi with the savage play
Yapzor jukes Vega
Overwatch
Alienware Monthly Melee: August
Alienware hosts a monthly tournament online that involves both a group stage and a double elimination playoff. Playing for $5,000 USD, eight teams have played this week.
First, FaZe Clan and compLexity Gaming were able to take Group A while Cloud9 and Sodipop won Group B.
While Cloud9 were certainly the favorites to win, they did not have an easy path as they lost to FaZe Clan in the Winners' Finals 3-1 and had to beat Sodipop 3-0 in the Losers' Finals to meet FaZe Clan again in the Grand Finals. In this rematch, Cloud9 was able to win the best-of-five 3-2 and win the tournament.
Cloud9 Surefour play as McCree vs Faze
Shadowburn as Genji after Nerf
Absolutely insane deflect by Shadowburn
Liquipedia Bracket Images used under CC-BY-SA
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James Hwang
My first MMOs included Ragnarok Online, Gunbound, Diablo II, and World of Warcraft. Nowadays, my wife (also a writer on MMOs) and I play League of Legends and any other MMOs we can get our hands on. I also love following eSports and attending eSports events.