Over the past two days our Danish Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad have been fighting their way through a 256 team bracket in an attempt to secure a spot in Dreamhack Winter’s $250,000 tournament. The top two of the qualifiers were guaranteed a place in the tournament and fully funded flights to Jönköping, Sweden next weekend.
On Tuesday, the team started out the bracket with a free win due to a lack of signups. This gave them plenty of time to prepare for the match up that followed, against Gameface. Though Gameface overcame their first rivals with ease, they were still no match for our Danes, who swiftly dispatched of them with a 16-0 win on inferno. Moving in to the round of 64, the next foe to fall was DeNova, a team that displayed much more of a resistance than that of the previous game. With that being said, they were still not up to par with the Reason side, sending us in to the round of 32 against the Portuguese side of K1CK eSports.
Despite K1CK’s reputation of being a stellar European side, the match was still quite a walkover, once again showing the calibre of players that make up the Reason CS:GO side. For Tuesday, this was the last match, giving the Danes a break before heading in to the round of 16 against TEAMFIST. The first game of Wednesday didn’t prove much of a test for our team, with a quick victory sending them to the round of 8, against the highly esteemed fm eSports. Going in to the game against fm, it was clear that both sides boasted a plethora of talent. With the history behind the two organisations, stemming from our two losses to them at i49, Reason’s eyes were firmly set on the win. After a fantastic performance, fm were silenced and denied further matches in the tournament.
The team were then in the semi-final, meaning they were but one win away from the flights to Sweden and a slot in the quarter of a million dollar event. Their opposition, LGB eSports, were also gunning for the prize. Reason took the first map with relative ease, building confidence with every round that fell their way. The second, de_dust2, went the way of LGB eSports after numerous back and forth encounters. The third map, de_train, saw a shaky start with the Danes finding themselves five rounds behind before claiming some of their own. Going in to the second half, our side were one round down and keen to overtake their Swedish enemies. Whilst taking a few rounds for their troubles, it proved too much of a challenge for the Danes, who eventually fell just a few rounds short of the win, losing to LGB eSports 1-2.
We wish every luck to LGB eSports in the Dreamhack tournament, and hope to see them there after attending the BYOC qualifier.
A summary of our results in the tournament:
[R] 16 – 0 GameFace
[R] 16 – 11 DeNova
[R] 16 – 12 TEAMFIST
[R] 16 – 10 K1CK eSports
[R] 16 – 12 fm eSports
[R] 1 – 2 LGB eSports
