After a draw with Liquid, ENCE failed to make it to the grand final of Blast Pro Sao Paulo, ENCE picked MIBR in the Blast Pro Stand-off. The rules of the stand-off are quite simple. A series of 1v1 aim duels are played on an aim map. The player to first reach 7 points is crowned victorious. The kills taken by the player per duel are added to the team tally. After 5 duels, the team with the higher kills is declared the winner and takes home 20,000$.
In the stand-off, ENCE showed a really dominant stand off right from the start. Aerial let felps secure only 5 kills on the opening M4 round. The same scoreline was repeated for the Deagle round between Aleksib and TACO.
In the third round, xseven demolished coldzera in the AK-47 round. The Brazilian maestro was restricted only to two rounds in the round.
The last two rounds ended with 7-6 score line, with ENCE emerging victorious on both rounds, following really close encounters between sergej and fer on CZ75 and FalleN and Allu on the big green gun.
With those , ENCE emerged victorious on all five rounds with a of 35:24. They took home the third place in the tournament and MIBR in the stand-off, not letting them take a single round.
Vice’s move to Cloud9 comes after Rogue decided to pull out of CSGO operations for a while as it was impossible to rebuild the roster following the departure of multiple players who received individual offers from other teams in the professional scene.
Despite this change, vice will play with Rogue at StarSeries i-League Season 7, which will end on April 7. His first event with Cloud9 will be BLAST Pro Series Miami, from April 12th-13th.
Image Credit: HLTV
Cloud9 look to find long needed roster stability. The team has been plagued with roster changes from March 2018 due to multiple issues such as Golden’s illness which prohibited him from playing CSGO competitively till he recovered completely.
This change completes the roster. The whole roster is:
Jamison “PVPX” Moore was the first one to join the squad along with Greg “Grego” McAllen. Grego previously played Overwatch League for Cloud9. PVPX joined them twam at the start of this month.
Joseph “Frexs” Sanchez and Justin “Chappie” Andrews are the final players of the Apex Legends Squad who formerly played PUBG under the C9 banner.
Cloud9 now joins other big-name organizations such as 100 Thieves, NRG, and TSM to invest time and money into this new game. The Cloud9 Apex team will be seen in action in the recently announced Twitch Rivals event. All eyes will be set on the men in blue who look to display their potential on stage.
Will other organizations begin to follow, or will this just be a fad that dies out within the next few months? Do you think more organizations should be taking part in this scene? Let us know what you think with some comments.
Sam “s0m” Oh, Bradley “ANDROID” Fodor, and Jacob “FugLy” Medina have officially signed with Team Envy following the departure of Taylor “Drone” Johnson and Stephen “reltuC” Cutler.
Team Envy fielded the roster without Taylor “Drone” Johnson and Stephen “reltuC” Cutler for the DreamHack Masters Dallas NA Open Qualifier and were successful in making it to the closed qualifiers.
These changes come after a long time of roster stability issues. Envy have tried out Matt “Pollo” Wilson as a stand-in and Finn “karrigan” Andersen on loan from FaZe Clan.
Join us in welcoming our latest additions to #EnvyCS!
Before being acquired by Team Envy, s0m has been inactive since he stood in for Swole Patrol helping them in qualifying for IEM Sydney, before three of the five players were picked up by eUnited.
CompLexity have announced that they have signed Hunter “SicK” Mims from Rogue. SicK will complete the roster and replace Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert who has been standing in for the roster since early 2019.
Following this change, it adds more truth to reports that Rogue might be exiting the CSGO scene as they have lost s Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen and Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen who are believed to be on a movie back home, to play on OpTic.
With n0thing on their ranks, the team were unable to hold on to their Legend status from the FACEIT Major as they went of the New Legends stage with a 1-3 scoreline at IEM Katowice 2019. In his short stint with the team, n0thing average a rating of 0.95 on LAN.
With these changes, Complexity finalised their roster as:
A report from Superdata Research suggests that Apex Legends has the best launch month of any free-to-play game in history. With the game generating a staggering 92 million $ revenue for Respawn Entertainment in its first month. Majority of this came from the console platform where the game had a strong start.
Apex Legends is currently the most popular free-to-play Battle Royale game, with more than 50 million registered users since launch. With the introduction of Season 1 Battle Pass the number of players is bound to increase which will also mean increase in monthly revenue. Currently Apex Legends had best Launch of all the Free-to-Play games, but it still wasn’t able to best Fortnite on either of the platforms ( i.e. PC and Consoles). With Epic’s Fortnite racking in a consistent 300 million $ month after month.
Apex Legends is still new when compared to Fortnite, but with number of players sharply rising on Apex’s side it is just a matter of time when Apex tops the charts.
Nissan is the latest automobile giant to enter esports, after it announced partnerships with OpTic and FaZe.
For any company trying to reach the Gen Z and millennial-minded audience, streaming and esports is an enormous opportunity. We believe this partnership presents a new approach in introducing ourselves and connecting with millions of fans through their favorite gamers.
Robert Cross, Director of Media and Activation at Nissan North America
The new association will see Nissan acting as the jersey sponsor for both teams, as well as provide its cars for digital content and marketing on their social media platforms.
We are thrilled to have an innovative automotive company like Nissan as a sponsor and brand partner. We look forward to creating compelling content together for this exciting relationship.
Lee Trink, CEO of FaZe Clan
Nissan joins a long list of automotive giants to join the Esports fraternity, including the likes of BMW with Cloud9, Team Liquid with Honda, Mercedes Benz with SK Gaming, Audi with Astralis among many others.
Ronald “Rambo” Kim has now become the head coach for the Cloud9 CSGO department. The 35-year-old will replace Soham “valens” Chowdhury, who has now moved to become the Head of Data Science at Cloud9.
Even though Cloud9 have not made an official announcement regarding the change, Rambo updated his Twitter to confirm the change in the positions inside the organisation. The official Cloud9 website also has Valens listed as Head of Data Science.
With this change, Rambo will hop onto the server with the men in blue during the ECS Season 7 Week 3, ESL Pro League Season 9 and BLAST Pro Series Miami. Rambo is no stranger to the Cloud9 roster. After leaving compLexity at the end of 2018, he made his first appearance with Cloud9 at iBUYPOWER Masters IV. This change was on the cards for a long time as Valens had publicly voiced his opinions about stepping from the coach role for a while. Rambo was not the first coach the team trialled. Kory “SEMPHIS” Friese was also a potential target for the position, failing to do so after an unsuccessful trial period.
However, this is not the end of worries for Cloud9 who still do not have a complete 5 man roster and were forced to pull out from ESC Season 7 Week 2 Games. The squad was in talks with a duo from Team OpTic after not continuing to use the services of Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro.
The much-anticipated tickets for COBX Masters- to be held from April 5-7 at NESCO, Mumbai have been launched on Insider. You can buy them here.
The $200,000 tournament will feature some of the best CSGO and DOTA teams from India and a few top International teams as well.
The tickets have been categorised into 3 tiers- the cheapest being the single day pass for Rs 199. The event pass provides access for all 3 days and is available for Rs 499, while the most premium ticket is the Super Fan Event Pass, which provides VIP access along with a jersey and drawstring bag. This ticket is priced at Rs 1499.
Entity faced Lucid Dream in a Best of Three Series for the IEM Sydney 2019 Southeast Asia Closed Qualifier. The maps for the BO3 were Nuke, Mirage and Cache. The map vetoes are as follows.
Lucid Dream removed Inferno
Entity removed Overpass
Lucid Dream picked Nuke
Entity picked Mirage
Lucid Dream removed Dust2
Entity removed Train
Cache was left over
Entity started the game on the CT side of Nuke, which was picked by Lucid Dream. The Indian side lost the pistol round and the following anti eco. Using this momentum, Lucid Dream propelled themselves to a scoreline of 4-0 before Entity pulled back two of their own.
The T-side domination from Lucid Dream did not stop and only let Entity end the half with only three rounds on board, at a scoreline of 12-3. Lucid Dream wanted to end the first map quite early by picking up the pistol and the following anti eco round.
Entity did not let Lucid Dream crush their dreams of a comeback and picked up the first buy round of the second half and the next hard eco from Lucid Dreams. Lucid Dreams forced into the next round, putting them onto map point. Lucid Dream put the final nail in the coffin, ending the map 16-5 on the back of a quick triple kill from Geniuss.
The second map, was Mirage which was picked by Entity saw them begin on the T side. The team from Thailand looked comfortable on the CT-side, coming out on top in the pistol round with a successful retake. The force buy gamble from the Indians failed,allowing Lucid Dream to put another round on board.
Lucid Dreams dominated the Indians on the CT-side, not allowing them to put a single round on the board till the 14th round, where the Indians were finally able to pick up one round, the only one of the first half. Lucid Dream completely dominated Entity, taking the first half in their favor with a scoreline of 14-1. Lucid Dreams looked to end the game quickly by picking up the first pistol round of the second half and finished the game with a smooth victory in the force buy from Entity which did not benefit the Indians. The last map ended with a scoreline of 16-1.
However, Entity have not been eliminated from the Closed Qualifiers. They still have a chance to make it to IEM Sydney from the Lower Brackets.
