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The three teams who occupied the top spots in this competition last season, Champions TyLoo, runners up Born of Fire and third place FIVE eSports Club will all return to see if they can emulate or improve on their performance last year.
They have been joined by two international teams that were specially invited, Team X and Epsilon eSports, as well as the three teams that made it through a tough qualifying process, VG.CyberZen, Energy Pacemaker and eFuture.
Team eFuture earned their spot in the finals after the organizers couldn’t find a third international team to invite, so instead offered the place to the team that finished third-best in qualifying.
The format of the competition is to have two groups of four teams as the initial opening stage. All matches in the group stage are best of one, so there’s no scope for making a mistake and coming back in subsequent games.
Teams will play each other once in the group phase before the top two teams qualify for the knockout phase.
The groups are as follows:
Group A:
- VG CyberZen
- Team X
- FIVE eSports Club
- Energy Pacemaker
Group B:
- TyLoo
- Epsilon eSports
- Born of Fire
- eFuture
The four teams out of the two groups will progress into the Playoffs at the semi final stage, with each match now taking on the format of a best of three contest.
There will be a third-place match to decide who comes third and fourth in the competition, as well as the final itself which will be a best of five clash between the two winners of the semi final.
The $100,000 prize pool is only shared between the top three teams, with the winners taking home $50,000, the runner up $30,000 and the third place team $20,000.
That makes that third-place game an all-or-nothing matchup between teams for a $20,000 purse.
CS:GO E-League reaches denouement with playoffs set to start
It is fair to say that the ELeague Season 1 has been a success in being the first league competition to be screened live on cable TV from Atlanta in the United States and once again this coming 
Friday, there will be a bunch of crucial matches as teams finally reach the latter stages of the competition: the playoffs.
After a hard-fought group stage, which saw six teams make it through to the playoffs, there was controversy when roster changes involving the group winners SK Gaming and Team X (who finished 13th) saw both teams disqualified due to roster changes that “do not comply with ELEAGUE rules.”
This then altered who qualified for both the playoffs and the Last Chance qualifier and also altered the rankings of the third-place teams which made the competition, somewhat difficult to follow.
However, the upshot of this is that after Virtus Pro and mousesports made it through the Last Chance bracket last week, we now have the final eight teams qualified for the playoffs.
The quarterfinal line up is as follows:
- Team EnVyUs versus Fnatic
- Natus Vincere versus Cloud9
- Astralis versus mousesports
- Virtus Pro versus Ninjas in Pyjamas
It’s the crunch time in the event now as teams get closer to earning their share of the $1,200,000 prize money on offer and the bookmakers already have a clear idea of who are likely to win the competition.
With Bet365 esports betting, you can back Fnatic to win the event overall at 7/4, with Natus Vincere 9/4. They are the two hot favorites in terms of esports betting odds with Ninjas in Pyjamas and Virtus pro both 11/2 shots and Astralis 8/1. The outsiders are mousesports (20/1), Team EnVyUs (22/1) and rank outsiders are Cloud9 who are 100/1 to win the event.
The competition will conclude next weekend with the semi-finals and finals played to decide which team walks away as the first ELEAGUE champion and get in one some exciting CSGO gambling to boot.
SL i-League StarSeries Season 2 offers DOTA 2 teams $300,000
Last January in Minsk, it was European team Alliance that walked away as the winner of the SL i-League StarSeries Season 1 event, and six months later, the event returns, this time in sunny Los Angeles as eight of the best teams from around the globe clash to take home their share of the $300,000 prize fund.
The teams competing in the SL i-League StarSeries Season 2 are a mixture of teams who qualified through regional qualifiers, a cup competition plus three who received a direct invite into the finals.
Direct invites:
- Evil Geniuses
- Team Secret
- Natus Vincere
Regional qualifiers:
- CDEC Youth (China)
- Digital Chaos (America)
- F.R.I.E.N.D.S (Europe)
- Fnatic (South East Asia)
H-Cup winner:
- compLexity Gaming
This relatively short event gets under way today on Thursday 21st and will run through until Sunday 24th July when the Grand Final will be played.
The competition does not have an initial group stage, instead starting at the quarter final stage, however losing teams at the quarter, semi and winners final stage, will drop into the Losers bracket at various stages to earn a second chance at a place in the Grand Final.
The fixture list for the quarterfinals is outlined below:
- Evil Geniuses versus CDEC Youth
- Fnatic versus Natus Vincere
- Team Secret versus compLexity Gaming
- R.I.E.N.D.S versus Digital Chaos
This is a popular event for esports betting this weekend with many esports bookmakers and at the moment you can get 6/5 on Evil Geniuses winning the event as they are the hot favourites to lift the title. Team Secret are a 13/8 shot, with Natus Vincere (7/1) and Fnatic (8/1) both ranked as having a fair shout.
The four teams after that however are the outsiders with CDEC Youth a 20/1 chance, compLexity Gaming and Digital Chaos both 25/1 shots and F.R.I.E.N.D.S the 40/1 outsiders.
