by The Europe Minor Championship – Berlin 2019 closed qualifiers have concluded, with the final four teams booking their places alongside CR4ZY, Fnatic, mousesports and North in Germany in July.
Staged over three days from June 10-12, the last phase of qualifying featured 16 teams in a double-elimination bracket Bo3 playoff format.
SEE ALSO: CS:GO ESPORTS TOURNAMENTS
The closed qualifiers did not offer any prize money but instead gave the top eight teams a ticket to Berlin, where a $50,000 prize pool will be offered alongside two places in the StarLadder Berlin Major and one spot in the Minor play-in.
While a $30,000 main prize is by no means a small amount of money, the real reward is a chance to play the world’s best CS:GO esports teams at the $1,000,000 StarLadder Major.
CR4ZY, Fnatic, mousesports and North secured passage to the Europe Minor on day two, which left four more spots to fill on the final day of qualifying.
Day three started off with Tricked Esport, Sprout, Virtus.pro and NoChance defeating their opponents to advance to the final round of playoffs, where they were paired as follows:
Team Ancient vs Tricked Esport
OpTic Gaming vs Sprout
BIG vs Virtus.pro
Heroic vs NoChance
Team Ancient and BIG both made short work of their opponents, beating them with relative ease.
Tricked Esport were no match for Team Ancient on either Dust II (16-10) or Nuke (16-13). While we saw some resistance in the second half on Nuke, Tricked simply fell short and lost 2-0.
On the other side, BIG were far too good for Virtus.pro. The Germans took a convincing 16-11 win on Train and repeated that scoreline on Inferno to seal a clean sweep.
The remaining two pairs, however, were far less one-sided.
Sprout entered the match against OpTic looking strong and started with a 16-10 on Mirage. They failed to deliver on Nuke, however, as OpTic squared the tie with a 16-11 result. It was all set up for a close finish, but Sprout found another level and gave OpTic only three rounds on the third and final map.
The second pair, while not as entertaining as the first, still provided us with a close fight. Heroic started off with a 16-11 win on Vertigo, followed by an 11-16 defeat on Mirage. NoChance completed the comeback with a 16-9 win on the last map to join CR4ZY, Fnatic, mousesports, North, Team Ancient, Sprout and BIG in Berlin.
