Counter Strike Global Offensive – CS:GO

Imperial tried their best to make a comeback against Vitality today in the Challengers Stage of the CSGO Rio Major 2022, but the international team and their stars didn’t allow it.

The IEM Rio Major is right around the corner, promising to be the biggest stage and event ever assembled for competitive CS GO. With such high stakes, including a huge prize pool, the heavy favorites will need their superstars to show up at their peak level in order to win the coveted Major trophy.

The IEM Rio Major is right around the corner, promising to be the biggest stage and event ever assembled for competitive CS GO. With such high stakes, including a huge prize pool, the heavy favorites will need their superstars to show up at their peak level in order to win the coveted Major trophy.

Following Vitality’s victory in ESL Pro League Season 16, Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen has become the first professional CSGO player to surpass the $2 million mark in earnings. This cements dupreeh as the highest earning CSGO player after more than ten years of active competition. While there are other professional CSGO players nipping at his heels, dupreeh will always be able to say that he was the first player to surpass the $2 million mark.

After a day of unexpected upsets at the IEM Rio Major RMR A qualifier tournament, the once “best team in the world” aka Danish dynasty Astralis has hit rock bottom, having failed to qualify for a Major for the first time in history as an organization after losing to forZe after just 2 maps.

FaZe Clan were by far considered the absolute favorites coming into the game against Gamer Legion in the Europe RMR A for the IEM CS GO Rio Major event. And while indeed they were able to take the victory this time around, it was not a walk in the park as everyone was expecting.

Group D at the ESL Pro League is shaping up to be the most clear cut of them all. We have three clear favorites facing underdogs in what should look like an easy day for some CSGO bets. We break down our predictions and reasoning below, making it easier for you to assess what markets fit best.

Starting on September 14th, six teams from the C group of ESL Pro League Season 16 will commence their journey. Three teams are going to go through, while the bottom three teams are packing their bags as they will be eliminated.

According to recent reports, BLAST is likely to organize next year’s Spring CS:GO’s Majors. The action will return to Europe after its sojourn into South America for the IEM Masters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Dexerto reports that Paris will be the first choice of venue, though this is still unconfirmed, because it has been “BLAST’s priority since day one and is the likeliest choice”. The tournament will be held from May 8-21, the same timeframe that the PGL Antwerp Majors took place this year.

Kory “SEMPHIS” Friesen, former CS9 pro player and head coach of ex-Gaimin Gladiators is organizing a crowdfunding campaign to aid his team while they attend a boot camp in Germany. The hope to reach a $10,000 CAD goal, of which over $2600 has already been collected since SEMPHIS Tweeted about it on Monday.

After the CSGO summer break, the competitive scene is back to action with one of the most exciting European events coming up. The BLAST Premier Fall Groups is set to kick off on August 19 and will run through the 28th. This tournament is going to be very interesting to watch because many teams made very important changes in their lineups during the off-season. For example, Evil Geniuses made a few changes to their roster and this will be a perfect opportunity to test them out.

The 2022 IEM Cologne was the last event before the summer break started, and the next top-tier event is coming a couple of weeks down the road. While a lot of the top CSGO teams are currently taking a break, there are some teams that are already making changes within their lines to increase their chances of winning the upcoming tournaments. We’ll be covering the most important roster changes that have been happening so far in the summer break.

CSGO isn’t immune to drama despite their scene being one of the oldest ones in the esports industry. Twitch streamers Gale Adelaide and Brian “Kephrii” St. Pierre stand accused of teaming in the $100,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ReadyUp Invitational tournament. Many players claim that despite being on opposite teams, they fed each other high point kills to get to the top.

The idea of having the Champion of Champions series was first introduced in 2021. Elisa Esports had expressed their interest in partnering with Relog Media, Funspark and GRID to provide a ray of hope for amateur teams, by giving them opportunities to participate in several tournaments over a set period with a prize money to the tune of USD 2.7 million. Teams relevant to the European scene, across both tier 1 and tier 2, were really interested.

If we look at their most recent results, Heroic made the group stages of IEM Cologne 2022, but they got knocked down to the lower bracket rather quickly. Just by looking at the caliber of players they have under their wings, Heroic is a team aspiring to be the pack leaders in the CSGO scene and this wasn’t the kind of result they would’ve wished for. Let’s be clear. They have been extremely competitive, but their inability to take that final step has led to some changes in their lineup. The cut-throat nature of the competitive scene, where performances and results are one’s currency, has now forced them to try and course-correct.

Even though Counter Strike as a title is already 2 decades old, it keeps gathering people from all around the world to catch the most exciting games from its competitive scene. That is something that not even the most recent esports titles can boast about, and the thing about Counter Strike is that there are no signs of slowing down. The final match of the IEM Cologne broke the previous record set at IEM Katowice earlier in the year with a peak of nearly 1.25 million viewers.