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teams in the world are gearing up for the qualification process for the 2017 World Championships.
This comes in form of Spring Split series events in six regions around the globe.
- NA LCS – North American League Championship Series
- EU LCS – European League Championship Series
- LCK – Korean Champions Series
- LPL – Chinese Champions Series
- LMS – Taiwan League of Legends Master Series
- CBLoL – Brazilian Circuito Brasiliero League of Legends series.
The timeline for each event is different. All start in January (many on Jan. 20), and some finish in mid-March, while others will continue until April.
The only event getting underway before Jan. 20 is the EU LCS qualifier event, which starts on Jan. 10 and runs for six days. On Jan. 15, two teams will have earned places in the 2017 EU CS Spring Split event.
The qualifiers
The qualifiers consist of 12 teams, the two teams that finished fifth and sixth in the 2016 EU CS Summer Split (Team Forge and Nerv) are joined by four teams that qualified through Open Qualifier events.
These are Euronics Gaming, Alientech eSports, Fnatic Academy, and Team Kinguin, as well as six winners of National League competitions across Europe. That’s Team LDLC from France, Alternate Attax from Germany, Tricked eSport from the Nordic League, ASUS ROG Army from Spain, Bobaski from Poland, and Team Larsson from the UK.
Esports Guide: Is Kinguin legit?
The teams have already been drawn into the two groups of six to decide who reaches the semifinals. The groups are as follows:
- Group A – Fnatic Academy, Euronics Gaming, Team LDLC, ASUS ROG Army, Bobaski, and Nerv
- Group B – Alientech eSports, Team Larssen, Alternate Attax, Team Kinguin, Team Forge, and Tricked eSport
During the round-robin stage, each team will face the other team in its group in a straight-out best-of-one matchup. After each team has played five games, the teams will be ranked according to the most points collected, and the top two teams in each group will progress to the semifinal.
In the semifinal, the winner of Group A will take on the runner-up of Group B and vice versa, with the winners of these events going on to contest the final.
However, victory at the semifinal stage is arguably more important as it will mean that the team that reaches the final will claim one of the two spots available in the 2017 EU CS Spring Split event and a shot at earning a place in the World Championships later in the year.
The two winners will join the ten teams already qualified for the EU LCS Spring Split event, including the 13/8 favourites to win the tournament G2 Esports. The other nine teams confirmed as finalists are H2K, Fnatic, Splyce, Misfits, Unicorns of Love, Team Vitality, Giants Gaming, ROCCAT and Origen.
The Spring Split odds
Bet365 is already offering extensive esports betting opportunities across many of the Spring Split events around the world, most notably those in North America, Europe, China and South Korea, the places from where the best teams tend to hail.
Join us again next week when the Spring Split 2017 will be about to get underway in earnest, and we’ll take a look at how each of the geographic qualification groupings are looking and preview who, if anybody, can usurp SK Telecom T1 as champions later in the year.
DreamHack Leipzig 2017 kicks off busy year of CS:GO DreamHack Events across the world
Jan. 13-15 will be three days of intense gaming action as many of the best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams will convene in Leipzig, 
Germany for the first DreamHack event of 2017. It’s the Zowie Open, or DreamHack Leipzig 2017.
This is the first of 10 scheduled DreamHack events taking place all around the world over the coming months. We’re looking at Texas, Tours in France, the summer event in Jonkopping, Sweden, Valencia in Spain, Atlanta, Montreal, Denver, and finally the winter event, which also takes place in Jonkopping.
This first event will have a prize pool of $100,000 guaranteed with half of that going directly to the winners, $20,000 for the runner-up, and the remaining teams battling for the rest.
The qualifiers
Eight teams have qualified for this first event of the year, and they have already been drawn into one of two groups for the initial stages of the tournament:
- Group A – Heroic, Team LDLC.com, Fnatic Academy, and qwerty
- Group B – Flipsid3 Tactics, Vega Squadron, Rogue, and BIG
During the first two days of action, the teams will battle it out across five games in each group to decide which of the two teams in each group will make it to the semifinals. The semifinals and final will both be played on Sunday, Jan. 15.
The Dreamhack Leipzig odds
Bet365 Sport is offering a choice of bets on the first set of matches with match betting available on the opening four games. Currently Heroic are 2/5 to beat qwerty in Group A. Team LDLC are even money to defeat the slight favourites Fnatic Academy (8/11).
In Group B, bettors can back Rogue at 1/2 to defeat Vega Squadron (6/4), while Flipsid3 Tactics are an 8/11 chance to win their game with BIG (evens).
Tune in to Bet365’s dedicated esports section this weekend to enjoy plenty of esports betting on this and several other events taking place around the world.
