The Vulkanbet Invitational is a CS:GO event that brings together a lot of up and coming teams. These aren’t your tier 1 competitors, although some of them, such as Virtus.pro, used to be among the world’s best. However, they are teams that have made enormous leaps in some cases towards the CS:GO summit and may start to challenge the more established lineups in the near future.
Vulkanbet Invitational Tournament Details
Vulkanbet Invitational is scheduled to take place between April 17th – 26th. The tournament offers $20.000 in prizes and is organized by Gamers.com.mt. Thanks to the long duration of the event, we’ll have the chance to watch quite a few good matches and learn more about the new generation of teams that are trying to break into the tier 1 division.
In the following sections, we will tell you everything you need to know about Vulkanbet Invitational and its participants. Many of them are teams that have made upward jumps of 100 or even 200 positions over the last 6 months in the global rankings, being in the most literal sense of the expression, on the rise.
Prize Distribution
Vulkanbet Invitational has a prize pool of $20.000. This amount will be distributed among the top four competitors in the following way.
- 1st position: $10.000
- 2nd position: $5.000
- 3rd position: $3.000
- 4th position: $2.000
Vulkanbet Invitational Participants and Competitive Format
Vulkanbet Invitational brings together eight European teams. These teams are the following:
- Havu
- Nemiga Gaming
- ex-3DMax
- Epsilon Esports
- LDLC
- Alternate Attax
- pro
- SJ Gaming
Like almost every other CS:GO tournament, the Vulkanbet Invitational will take place in two stages. During the Group Stage, the eight teams will be split into two groups of four and the GSL format will be employed for each of them. The Playoffs Stage will be played in a Single Elimination format. Each match during the Playoffs is a Bo3 series.
The two groups will be the following:
Group A (already decided)
- 1st place: ex-3DMax (2 W – 0 L)
- 2nd place: Nemiga Gaming (2 W – 1 L)
- 3rd place: Virtus.pro (1 W – 2 L)
- 4th place: LDLC (0 W – 2 L)
Image snipped from www.gamers.com.mt
Group B (April 22nd – 23rd)
- Havu
- SJ Gaming
- Epsilon Esports
- Alternate Attax
Vulkanbet Invitational Team Analysis
Here’s a quick analysis of each of the eight competitors that will take part in Vulkanbet Invitational.
Epsilon Esports
This is a team with more than ten years of experience but its current roster got formed quite recently. Three players and the team’s coach joined the organization over the last two months. And immediately after they joined, Epsilon’s results changed completely. Right now, Epsilon is occupying the 27th place in the global CS:GO rankings and can be regarded as one of the best teams at this tournament.
The Vulkanbet Invitational is likely to serve as a launching ramp for Epsilon. This team is looking for broader recognition and every small victory counts. We expect them to do well at this event and get at least a top three result.
Alternate Attax
Alternate Attax is a German team that managed to climb 200 positions this year, being ranked around 40th at the moment. This was another successful case of massive roster changes. As soon as the organization took its CS:GO team seriously and decided to put their name on the map, some very talented players were brought in and their impact was immediately felt.
This April, Alternate Attax claimed the title at ESL Meisterchaft: Spring 2019 after a victory against Sprout in the Grand Final. This is an important indicator regarding Alternate’s skill level, as Sprout is a former Major participant.
Going into Vulkanbet Invitational, our expectations are pretty high from this team, given their string of successes over the last 4 months.
Havu
Finland seems to have more than ENCE around these days and Havu is looking to become a tier 1 team this year. The start of the season was quite bad for them but now they’re on an upward trend again, sitting at position 42 in the global rankings.
The volatility of the roster does worry us a bit, seeing that Havu is still trying out new players to complete its five man stack. Because of this instability, we expect Havu to lose against most of the other teams at Vulkanbet Invitational.
Nemiga Gaming
Nemiga’s rise in CS:GO happened lightning fast, from around the 247th position six months ago, to a top 50 position today. It’s true, towards the bottom of that top 50 but still, this was an impressive result.
Compared to some of the other competitors, Nemiga has a few important weakness. Perhaps the most important one of these weaknesses is their new IGL. The player was brought in just one month ago, and one month is not enough to reinvent the playstyle of a roster. Keep in mind that this isn’t just a new player who has to be integrated within a system. He’s an IGL who was likely brought in to change the system.
In spite of these potential setbacks, Nemiga has been quite successful so far at Vulkanbet Invitational. They finished 2nd in Group A, which was already played after dropping a game to ex-3DMax and securing a decisive win vs LDLC and another victory against Virtus.Pro.
ex-3DMax
In spite of having some important players in its composition, such as the former Team Envy and The Imperial member hAdji, ex-3DMax lacks results. The organization’s achievements have been almost null this season. So their chances of winning the title at Vulkanbet Invitational are quite slim. However, just like Nemiga Gaming, ex-3DMax had an excellent performance in Group A and finished in 1st place with two consecutive wins.
Virtus.pro
VP was one of the key teams to watch at Vulkanbet Invitational but not because they’re in good shape. For all we can tell, they’re not. Just two seasons ago, Virtus.pro was one of the world’s best teams. But then they plummeted more than 120 positions in the global rankings, after a string of poor results. They were unrecognizable and some of the veterans had to be dropped. TaZ, pashaBiceps and NEO left the team as a result of these failures and eventually got replaced with new faces. But so far, VP hasn’t recovered very well.
At Vulkanbet Invitational, we regarded Virtus.pro as one of the weaker squads and indeed, they failed to get out of Group A, finishing the Group Stage with just one win and two losses. However, a future comeback is not out of the discussion for this former CS:GO giant, which still has some of its former players in the active roster.
LDLC
It’s actually incredible that in spite of having so many great players, LDLC keeps on losing. Their most important problem is likely to be communication, simply because MAJ3R is from Turkey while the rest of the team is French. So the IGL is not exactly capable of making himself understood, which results in a lot of errors.
During the Group Stage of Vulkanbet Invitational, LDLC should have had a strong performance in Group A. However, they did the exact opposite and lost two matches in a row.
SJ Gaming
This is another Finnish team with a mixture of strong and less experienced players. They’ve been around for a year and a half. The experience of the roster as a unit is excellent at this point. However, the individual skill of some of the players may not be good enough to allow SJ Gaming to compete against some of the other teams at Vulkanbet Invitational. Overall, we regard them as weaker than the rest.
