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The action is well underway in the ESL Pro League Season 18 tournament, as the first 12 of the 16 teams that will be competing in the Playoffs have been determined. Group C came to a thrilling conclusion as 9z made a miracle run in the Lower Bracket after a 0-2 start.
Fans won’t have to wait long for more exciting Counter-Strike action as the final triple elimination bracket of the Group Stage will get underway as Group D takes to center stage on Wednesday morning.
Lynn Vision Gaming vs. G2 Esports
- When: Wednesday, September 20th – 10 AM
- Odds: Lynn Vision Gaming (+800) vs. G2 Esports (-1600)
The opening window of matches in Group D will feature fan favorites G2 Esports taking on the ESL Challenger League Season 44: Asia-Pacific winners Lynn Vision Gaming.
The 2023 calendar year has been good for G2 Esports, having two IEM victories this year and coming up big in Katowice in February and in Cologne in August.
They currently sit in 2nd place in the ESL CS:GO World Rankings and are one of the favorites to win the whole tournament. That doesn’t mean that they can afford to play sloppy, as all the teams competing can be dangerous.
The first team getting a chance to take down G2 is Lynn Vision Gaming, who, unlike G2 Esports, had to qualify for the ESL Pro League, which they did by winning ESL Challenger League Season 44: Asia-Pacific. At the end of the Regular Season, Lynn Vision sat at the top of the Group A Standings with a match record of 6-1.
Lynn Vision Gaming then had a clean run-through Playoffs, knocking down FyR Esports 2-1, Wins Up Gaming 2-1, and IHC Esports 2-0 to make it to the Grand Finals via the Upper Bracket, where they’d beat Wings Up Gaming again this time with a clean 3-0 sweep.
They’ll have plenty of motivation to come into this opening match and shock the world by taking down one of the tournament favorites.
Team Liquid vs. Virtus Pro
- When: Wednesday, September 20th – 10 AM
- Odds: Team Liquid (+360) vs. Virtus Pro (-500)
The other match in the opening window of Group D is between two organizations with very deep histories in the competitive Counter-Strike esports scene. Team Liquid enters the ESL Pro League Season 18 as a partner team and is currently ranked 20th in the ESL World Rankings.
This is a team that has seemingly just imploded over the course of 2023. They got 9th-12th at IEM Dallas in May before finding a 17th-20th finish at IEM Cologne. They look to turn around their string of poor performances by at least making it to the Playoffs here at the ESL Pro League.
Virtus Pro punched their ticket for Season 18 of the ESL Pro League by winning the ESL Challenger Katowice 2023. They didn’t drop a single match at the Challenger, making it through the Group Stage and Playoffs unscathed and competing against really good teams.
In the Playoffs, they took down both 9z Team and ENCE, two teams that already have claimed Playoff Spots at the Pro League in the past few weeks.
After showing they can compete with some of the best teams at the tournament already, the expectations should be fairly high for this Virtus Pro team. You can catch all of the action live on both YouTube and Twitch online.