ECS Season 8 Finals – Preview

Today begins the 28th ECS Season 8 Finals to be held in Arlington, Texas. The competition will have its grand final decided on Sunday, December 1st. With the presence of the 4 best teams in the world today and 4 other challenging teams, the contests promise to be fierce from the group stage to the finals.

There is a great expectation from the latest updates that CS:GO has undergone in the price change of SG 552, Famas and Galil. Not only that, but also a reduction of their damage. A negative for some teams that have not been able to train enough this new update because they are traveling in other competitions, such as MIBR, Evil Geniuses and AVANGAR. On the other hand, Astralis, Liquid and fnatic are expected to be accustomed to this new update and to deliver better results than their opponents.

GROUP A

• Evil Geniuses: There is concern about their last two Asian championships, not even the CS: GO Asia Championships and IEM Beijing semifinals coming up with Evil Geniuses coming in with lower morale. Following the title of the ESL New York and StarSeries i-League Season 8, better performance was expected from the Americans, but two disappointments in the last two championships.
• Liquid: After a perfect first half of 2019, Americans are trying to find the way to victory again. Over the past 3 months, the best team placement has been an ESL New York semifinal. Now try these ECS finals to improve your performance to get back up the world rankings.
• NiP: NiP Swedes in the last 3 months have won 2nd and 3rd at BLAST Copenhagen and Moscow, Plopski's entry has given a boost to the team who are coming up with good results, but they will need something more to qualify for the playoffs.
• AVANGAR: A very good second half of the AVANGAR team in September took second place at StarLadder Major Berlin and had its goal achieved weeks later at BLAST Moscow, where they beat ForZe in the final. Since then, they are looking to improve their ranking, not as they expected at the Asia Championships, but now they want to go further in the ECS finals.

GROUP B

• Astralis: After a rough start to the year, Astralis had a perfect start in the second half, over the past 3 months it has beaten IEM Beijing in addition to StarLadder Major Berlin, taking second chances at ESL New York and 3-4th at DreamHack Malmo and BLAST Copenhagen. Recovered the TOP 1 ranking after a while embittering positions below, enters as one of the favorite teams and beat this ECS.
• fnatic: In the last 3 months he has participated in a few competitions, yet he has exceeded expectations and got a 1st in DreamHack Malmo and a 2nd in StarSeries i-League Season 8. The question remains, can fnatic remain a consistent team in the top four or maybe climb higher? The ECS result will give us these answers.
• MIBR: Following the departure of Coldzera and the entry of kNgV, MIBR has managed to remain in the top 10 but with many uncertainties of their team potential, in the last 3 months has played 5 championships and has not reached any finals. There is a high expectation on Brazilians.
• Sharks: Another Brazilian team that reaches these ECS finals, currently in the 38th position in the world ranking, Brazilians feel that this championship has a greater weight to really test their players, in order to show to the world the team's LAN potential.

PRIZE POOL

ECS Season 8 Finals Awards:

• First Place – $225.000
• Second Place – $100.000
• 3rd Place – $50.000
• 4th Place – $50.000
• 5th Place – $25.000
• 6th Place – $25.000
• 7th Place – $25.000
• 8th Place – $25.000

At the ECS Season 7 Finals that took place in June of this year in London, the winning team was Vitality, the curious fact is that the French failed to qualify for the Season 8 Finals, staying out of contention for that title.

Vitality won the last season of ECS in June (Image: ECS).