Contents
The qualifying period for Fragadelphia, the final competition of which gets underway July 28, is still ongoing. While several teams have confirmed their place in the tournament through an online qualifier, the second qualification tournament, the Road to NSGSC, will be played Monday and Tuesday.
What is the Road to NSGSC Qualifier?
There are four places in the Fragadelphia 11 event available for the four top teams in this qualifier. The 16 teams play an initial group phase for seeding. In the playoff, it is a straight knockout competition from the quarterfinal through to the semis. All the semifinal teams are guaranteed spots in the Fragadelphia Final, and the two finalists will earn seeded spots.
How is Fragadelphia 11 organized?
By Friday, we’ll know all 20 teams competing at SunCenter Studios in Philadelphia.
The current list of 12 confirmed qualifiers is:
- compLexity Gaming
- District 7
- Rise Nation
- Counter Logic Gaming Academy
- CLG Red
- Team Dignitas Female
- EZG eSports
- Final Feature
- RONIN
- Royal Flush Seven
- SlashLVL
- Ex-Synthetik
As a minor event, Fragadelphia tends to attract only the Premier-level teams that struggle to win at the higher level events. For lesser teams, taking on the likes of, say, compLexity Gaming is a real chance to gauge just how close or far they are from becoming Premier CS:GO teams.
PGL Major Krakow, DreamHack Atlanta crown their winners
This past weekend, two big CS:GO events concluded and recognized their winners: the PGL Major Krakow 2017 and DreamHack Atlanta. Here’s a breakdown of how it all went.
PGL Major Krakow 2017
One thing was already certain at the PGL Major Krakow 2017: neither of the two hot favouites would lift the trophy.
After an intriguing Swiss System opening stage, top seeded Gambit Esports defeated Fnatic 2-0 in two hard-fought games (16-14, 16-12). BIG and Immortals clashed in the second event. BIG took the opening map 19-17 before Immortals won the next two 16-7 and 16-14 to earn a semifinal spot.
Virtus.pro came through their quarterfinal with North in solid fashion, but it was the second semi that drew most attention — SK Gaming vs. Astralis.
Those teams also met in the group stage, where SK Gaming came out on top. But this time, Astralis emerged. The Danish secured surprisingly easy 16-12 and 16-6 victories.
That set up an epic semi between Gambit Esports and Astralis. With SK Gaming’s conquerors now the new favorites for the event, they didn’t bank on an unbeaten Gambit Esports once again showing their class. Gambit took the opening match 16-10 before Astralis bounced back to win the second 16-8. A third and deciding map was required, and this was a closely fought game with Gambit taking the victory 16-12.
In that Final, they would meet Immortals, who came through their semi with Virtus.pro in confident fashion, winning the opening two maps 16-5 and 16-11 to confirm themselves as one of the top two finishers and guarantee at least a cash prize of $150,000.
The Final began well for Immortals as they racked up a superb 16-4 win on the opening map to put Gambit under real pressure. But once again, they responded well by winning the next map (Train) 16-11. Then in the decider, Gambit Esports once again showed their quality to claim a 16-10 victory on Inferno and $500,000.
DreamHack Atlanta
The group stages of DreamHack Atlanta saw Renegades and Heroic come through as the top seeds. HellRaisers and Team EnVyUs joined them in the semis.
That set up two semifinals — Heroic against Hellraisers and Renegades against Team EnVyUs. In the opening game, top seeded Heroic came through 2-1 against Hellraisers. In the second semi, Team EnVyUs sprung a shock, defeating Renegades 2-1 to set up a final with Heroic, a team that had already beaten them in the group stages.
This time around, Team EnVyUs came out on top, coming back from a 16-11 loss in the first map to win the next two in emphatic fashion, 16-8 and 16-2. It was their first win in a Premier-level tournaments since World Electronic Sports Games 2017 back in January.
