Astralis and 3DMAX swept their matches Wednesday to advance to the Group A upper-bracket final of the ESL Pro League Season 19 in Saint Julian’s, Malta.
Astralis defeated FaZe Clan and 3DMAX blanked Fnatic, both by 2-0 scores, and will meet on Saturday.
Also in Group A, Eternal Fire and Virtus.pro posted midbracket round 1 wins. The Fire edged Imperial Esports 2-1, while Virtus.pro shut out SAW 2-0. In Thursday matches, the Fire will meet Fnatic and Virtus.pro will take on FaZe Clan.
In a pair of Group B upper-bracket quarterfinals matches, G2 Esports blanked TYLOO 2-0 and The MongolZ got past Team Falcons 2-1. Those winners will square off in one of the upper-bracket semifinal matches on Thursday. The other semifinal will pit Team Vitality against BetBoom, who each advanced with wins on Tuesday.
The $750,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event features 32 teams broken up into four groups of eight. Group-stage winners will advance to the quarterfinals; runners-up advance to the Round of 12 as the high seeds; third-place teams advance to the Round of 16 as the high seeds; and fourth-place teams advance to the Round of 16 as the low seeds.
The group stage is triple-elimination with upper, middle and lower brackets. All matches are best-of-three until the grand final, which is best-of-five.
The tournament runs through May 12. The winner earns $170,000 and qualifies for the IEM Cologne 2024 event.
Astralis survived two close calls against FaZe Clan, winning 13-11 on Ancient and 13-9 on Nuke. Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard of the all-Danish lineup led the victory with 36 kills, and Martin “stavn” Lund had a kills-deaths differential of plus-4.
3DMAX opened with a 13-5 win on Anubis and clinched 13-10 on Ancient. Lucas “Lucky” Chastang of the French squad had 36 kills and a plus-19 K-D. Filip “Graviti” Brankovic also had 36 kills for the winners.
The group stage continues Thursday with six matches:
–Fnatic vs. Eternal Fire (Group A midbracket quarterfinals)
–FaZe Clan vs. Virtus.pro (Group A midbracket quarterfinals)
–Team Vitality vs. BetBoom Team (Group B upper-bracket semifinals)
–The MongolZ vs. G2 Esports (Group B upper-bracket semifinals)
–Shark Esports vs. M80 (Group B midbracket round 1)
–Team Falcons vs. TYLOO (Group B midbracket round 1)
ESL Pro League Season 19 prize pool
1. $170,000, 2,000 BLAST Premier points — TBD
2. $80,000, 1,400 points — TBD
3-4. $45,000, 750 points — TBD
5-8. $32,000, 275 points — TBD
9-12. $23,500 — TBD
13-16. $17,500 — TBD
17-20. $12,000 — TBD
21-28. $7,000 — TBD
29-32. $3,500 — TBD
–Field Level Media