The CS.MONEY blog is here to cover the most important events of the first week of May. Today on the menu: the new team of the former SK player, NAVI’s tournament win, Liquid’s new coach, and the fate of the last slot at Flashpoint 3.
fer found a new squad
Fernando “fer” Alvarenga found a new team. The two-time major champion has been “teamless” since the beginning of this year. Over this period, he’s hinted several times that he’ll be back in eSports in no time.
Fernando’s new team is Team Imperial. Currently, they are based in the U.S. and are trying to pass the open qualifiers at cs_summit 8. We just want to wish good luck to Fernando in his new team!
NAVI win at DreamHack
Last weekend saw the end of DreamHack Masters Spring 2021. Almost all the world’s best teams took part in the competition. Heroic, G2, FURIA, Natus Vincere, and Gambit made it to the playoffs of the tournament. The latter two reached the grand final of the championship.
According to HLTV, the CIS-based clubs defeated most of the top teams, securing their supremacy on the international stage. In the finals, everything went according to Natus Vincere’s plan. “Born to Win” took three maps in a row and won at DreamHack Masters Spring 2021.
The best player of the tournament was Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. He played 15 maps during the tournament, his average rating being 1.41. It’s only only two maps that s1mple didn’t shine on, letting his rating drop below 1.
adreN returns to Liquid
Eric “adreN” Haag returned to Liquid as coach. A small reminder: last August, the team turned down Eric and replaced him with former commentator and analyst Jason “moses” O’Toole.
After six months of working with moses as head coach, the team has secured its place among the top seven teams in the world and reached the finals of the IEM Global Challenge. We’ll see at the first North American RMR tournament whether adreN can improve those results or not. The event will start on May 20.
Highlight of the week
The highlight of the previous week was undoubtedly the clutch by the FURIA new member Pateen “junior” Johnson. In his match to reach the DreamHack Masters semifinals, he ended up in a clutch situation against two NAVI players at a 18-16 score. It seemed like there was no chance! But two shots from junior prevented Born to Win from winning the round. Subsequently, this resulted in a lost map. However, even winning the first map didn’t enable FURIA to win the match.
HYENAS players took the last slot at Flashpoint 3
It took a long time to decide on the last invitation to Flashpoint 3. Eventually, it happened to be assigned to North, but the organization left esports in February. When the invitations to the tournament were announced, there was one free slot left. In the end, the last slot went to HYENAS, who had three players from that very North lineup.
To obtain the last invitation, Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye and Philip “aizy” Aistrup had to get either René “cajunb” Borg or Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen into their team. Eventually, “cajunb” was chosen. He replaced Frederik “Fessor” Sørensen on the team. We may not see the team in the starting lineup. The team is quite capable of selecting Fessor as a player for the tournament. They are hardly intimidated by the 20% point penalty for roster changes during the RMR Championship.
Ancient replaces Train in the competitive pool
Last week, Valve surprised everyone by making a reshuffle in the competitive map pool. Train, which turned seven years old not so long ago, left it. The empty place was taken not by Anubis or Tuscan but by Ancient. This decision caused a lot of indignation in the community. Map in green colors failed to strike a chord with most of the players, but the pros noticed a curious structure. Some teams have already started practicing on it.
Notably, RMR tournaments will be finished with the old map pool, and the first major tournament with Ancient will be IEM Summer 2021.
If you want to stay in the know, keep following the CS.MONEY blog. It’s exciting here!
