2018 ELEAGUE Major

12 January, 2018 - N/A Boston & Atlanta, United States

ELEAGUE will be hosting their second Major in the beginning of 2018. Majors in CS:GO is the most prestigious tournaments, with all the best teams participating as well as a $1,000,000 prize pool.

The 2018 ELEAGUE Major Qualifiers and the Group Stage will take place in the ELEAGUE Arena at Turner Studios in Atlanta and the playoffs with be played in the Agganis Arena in Boston.

Teams that makes it to the playoffs in Majors gets a Legend Status, meaning that they will be directly invited to the next Major. The eight legends will be joined by eight challengers that will be going through the Qualifiers.

The teams that are participating in the qualifiers will be the eight teams that didn't make it out of groups in the last major as well as the top two teams from each of the four Minors that will take place ahead of the Major.

Preview

This year’s first major tournament would be held in Boston.

Eight teams secured their spot finishing in top 8 of the PGL Krakow 2017: Gambit, Immortals, Virtus.pro, Astralis, SK, Fnatic, BIG, North.

8 more seats were available and some of the best teams like Faze had to fight in the Eleague Major 2018 Main Qualifier to earn their spot on this years major, and some of them failed too.

Today Eleague Major 2018 Main Qualifier is finally over and we can’t wait for the major to finally start. 16 teams fought to secure their place in the Major, the qualification tournament was Swiss system knockout.

In the picture above you can see Swiss system explained. Let’s say your team is called team A, if you win the first match you would play vs team B who has also won in the first match. After that you would play against team C(2-0) or team D(1-1) depends on score result, if you win against team B you would have 2 wins and 0 loses (2-0) and you would play against team C(2-0) and if you lose against team B you would have 1 win and 1 lose so you would play against team D(1-1). After your team reaches 3 wins, you are qualified, but you can only lose 2 matches during the process, if you lose the third match, you are out.

Two teams managed to win all 3 matches and proceed to the main tournament in the round 4 of qualifier Cloud9and G2, 3 more teams qualified with 3 wins and 1 lose: Faze, Space Soldiers and Vega Squadron and 3 more teams were barely able to qualify with the final result of 3W-2L: Mousesports, Natus Vincere, Quantum Bellator Fire, and Liquid.

Some teams managed to surprise, Australian team Renegades and not so long ago best European team EnvyUs and failed to qualify. Nobody could predict that Quantum Bellator Fire and Vega Squadron would take their places in the major, but both teams deserved that, they played well and they fought against all odds and they won. I wish both teams all the best in the upcoming matches. Vega Squadron was the biggest surprise of this qualifies, they played very aggressive counter strike and even the best teams did not know how to deal with that. Again, there is not a single Asian, African or Australian team in eleague major. 13 teams from Europe, 2 from North America and one and only SK from South America.

This tournament would be held for 9 days, Jan 19th – Jan 28th, 2018. , 16 teams fighting for the grand prize of enormous: $1,000,000.

Teams:
Gambit
Immortals
Virtus.pro
Astralis
SK
Fnatic
BIG
North
Cloud9
G2
Faze
Space Soldiers
Vega Squadron
Mousesports
Natus Vincere
Quantum Bellator Fire
Liquid

Those 16 teams would again play by the Swiss system rules, and top 8 teams would proceed to the playoffs. 

This is the most unpredictable major by now. We don’t know what to expect:

SK had a rooster change, would this affect them or we would see another sick clutch from Fallen or Coldzera.

Device just got back to Astralis after months being sick, so we can’t be sure what to expect from him, he said he is coming back stronger than ever, but he was inactive for months, will this affect his gameplay?

Space Soldiers are now on the scene, rising talents XANTARES and Calyx can always surprise us with their performance.

Faze is doing everything but great, can Niko surprise us again?

What to expect from Vega Squadron, can they continue to play with that aggressive or they would be punished for that New Fnatic boost? Who knows, but we know that this would be an interesting major and we can’t wait to see it.

From the betting perspective, Faze is an absolute favorite here. Members of SK confirmed that they did not practice their strategies enough with boltz and it is still hard for him to adjust to SK kind of gameplay, so don't let low odds to fool you. With the return of dev1ce Astralis is finally back together and they announced that they are going for the main prize, and I also think they have a great chance here. Fnatic, NaVi and G2 are full of surprises on every major, Cloud9 is on home ground and they won last 2 LAN tournaments they have played in America, mouse is also in good shape so you can try to bet so if you want to go with a risky bet and high odds and the rest of the teams don't even stand a chance for winning this major.

Tournament Format

The New Challengers Stage: January 12th - 15th, 2018 in USA Atlanta

16 Team Swiss System Format, all matches are best-of-one.
Top 8 Teams proceed to The New Legends Stage (bottom 8 Teams are eliminated)

The New Legends Stage: January 19th - 22nd, 2018 in USA Atlanta
 
16 Team Swiss System Format, all matches are best-of-one.
Top 8 Teams proceed to The New Legends Stage (bottom 8 Teams are eliminated).        

The New Champions Stage: January 26th - 28th, 2018 in USA Boston

Playoffs, Single-Elimination Bracket all matches are best-of-three.