The most important qualification of April is about to begin! BLAST is a tournament organizer, which any team wants to get to its events. 16 teams from all over the world will participate in BLAST Showdown Spring 2021. Let’s see why Gambit is the main contender for victory.
Single elimination grid. To qualify for Spring Finals, participants must win three matches. Gambit have a good seed with not the toughest opponent in the first round.
Gambit is a team that very quickly rose to the top in 2021. After two years of hard work, the CIS team has finally entered the top-5 of the world ranking. The victory in IEM Katowice 2021 contributed to this success. Despite this, prior to the tier-1 tournament, Gambit won many tier-2 and tier-3 championships: this team has no shortage of stability.
In addition to winning the tier-2 and tier-3 levels, as well as the recent victory at IEM Katowice 2021, Gambit has already managed to reach the ESL Pro League Season 13 playoffs without losing a match. The Russian team is a clear favorite for BLAST Spring Showdown, despite the fact that only two of the sixteen teams will receive the slot.
Let’s go through all the sixteen participants of BLAST Premier Showdown Spring 2021. The tournament will feature seven teams that advanced through regional qualifiers: Endpoint, SAW, NASR, 9z, Dignitas, Extra Salt, and Spirit. Six more are participants of the group stage of the spring BLAST season. MIBR, OG, G2, Vitality, Liquid, and Astralis. The remaining three teams received invites (FURIA, Gambit, and Heroic).
If you look at the list of participants, then a serious threat to Gambit is represented by four teams: Heroic, Astralis, Spirit and Liquid. But Gambit is able to cope with each of them: Heroic in the old line-up has already lost to Gambit. The updated roster can take a map, but it is unlikely that the Danes will have enough strength to win the match despite the fact Heroic recently overcame Gambit in bo5. Spirit vs Gambit is a classic that ends with Gambit’s victory.
Over the past six months, Gambit and Spirit have met each other four times, and all four matches have remained for Gambit.
The Russians did not have any matches against Liquid, but given the instability of the Americans, this opponent is also not a favorite in the match with Gambit. Only Astralis remained. Gambit will have a match with the Danes in the ESL Pro League. On paper, this match is 50/50. But what sets the Russians apart from the Danish team is the fact that the Astralis team went for a walk in 2021, and Gambit, on the contrary, only gain from tournament to tournament.
In the end, we have a tournament to which Gambit will come in the status of the main favorite, regardless of the result in the ESL Pro League. At BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2021, two slots for the main tournament will be played, and one of them should go in favor of the guys from Russia.
