The GO Malta Esports Festival - $15,000 Loot.bet Cup #3

Every year, we're always challenging ourselves to step things up for both the community and in terms of personal development as a company. With that being said, Gamers.com.mt is hosting an international CS:GO tournament with a $15,000 prize pool for this year's GO Malta Esports Festival, fueling the well-established fact that the franchise remains the largest on the island. The tournament will only be possible thanks to the support of the main sponsor in Loot.Bet and a the support of the Malta Tourism Authority, Gaming Malta, Chiliz and Zowie.

With the prize pool that is involved, one can expect some of the top teams in the world grabbing out at it - and that's exactly who've we've invited. Eight of the best upcoming CS:GO teams in the international scene will be competing throughout the tournament, the following names should sound familiar. Including the names of Red Reserve, consisting of players such as draken (ex-NiP) and disco doplan (ex-Fnatic) among others, Left Out and Team Vitality which rose from the ashes of G2 and EnVyUs with players like ScreaM, NBK, Happy and more! One shouldn't forget AGO, the Polish team ranked 24th in the world and Spirit, ranked 33rd in the world. Simply put - the stacked talent for the competition is simply another article on its own; you can check out the official list of participants here. They are all upcoming names which we expect to see more of at the top in the coming year of international CS:GO. 

Of course, comparing statistics is not how the better team is decided in esports, as the far opposite in cold-cut competition serves as the standard. Kicking off as soon as 1st November, the teams will be recovering from a late night of Halloween practice in order to compete in the Group Stage to be carried out from the 1st to the 8th of November. Having already been split into two groups of four, as viewable on the event page, a Round Robin format will animate the two groups through a total of twelve best-of-one matches(three best-of-one matches for each team), by the end of which, the top two teams will progress to the final stage of the event. 

By this point, the Final Stage will consist of just 4 teams. Following a month of preparation, the remaining teams will recollect on the decisive weekend of 7th-9th December in order to determine a victor from the single elimination bracket consisting of 3 best-of-three games. The prize pool will be divided as follows: $10,000 for first place, $3,000 for second and $1,000 a piece for the 3rd and 4th place. This places a huge amount of gravity on the games deep into the final stage. Note that all match-ups will proceed as according to ESL's most recent 5v5 competitive layout. 

The whole event will be broadcasted internationally through twitch, covered by professional casters breaking everything down in both English (https://www.twitch.tv/gmr_tv) and Russian, courtesy of UCC (https://www.twitch.tv/uccleague). 

The brackets are empty while the group stages are eerily quiet; this will all change as soon as next week. Be sure to follow the progress of the event here while also paying attention to the twitch links shown. Schedule for group stage match-ups is viewable in the 'Group Stage' section. 

Gamers.com.mt wishes luck to all the teams involved, once again thanking our main sponsor of Loot.Bet and the help of the Malta Tourism Authority, Gaming Malta, Chiliz and Zowie in organizing it all!