Eight CS:GO teams are all set to do battle against each other at the ESL One: New York 2019. Organized by ESL, the tournament begins September 26 with the Grand Finals set for September 29. The tournament is going to be at the Barclays Center in New YOrk City with a prize pool of $200,000.
The teams participating are:
- Group A
- ENCE (Invited)
- eUnited (North American Qualifier)
- G2 Esports (European Qualifier)
- Team Liquid (Invited)
- Group B
- Astralis (Invited)
- FaZe Clan (Invited)
- NRG Eports (Invited)
- OpTic Gaming (GG.Bet Invitational)
The Group Stage is set for September 26-27 and follows a two double-elimination format. All matches are to be best-of three with the top two teams from each group advancing to the playoffs. The playoffs follow a single elimination bracket with the semifinals at best-of three and the grand finals are a best-of five.
The ESL One: New York 2019 is the second tournament under the Intel Grand Slam Season 3. The Intel Grand Slam hands out a prize of $1 million to the first team that manages to win four S0Tier events that are organized by either ESL or DreamHack Masters. The first season was won by Astralis and took 15 tournaments. Astralis had a chance to win Season 2 after it won the first tournament. However, Liquid took the next four tournaments to grab the $1 million prize. For the new season, it is Liquid that managed to win the first tournament, which was the Intel Extreme Masters XIV - Chicago. The pressure for the upcoming tournament is now all on Liquid.
For those interested to watch the tournament, games for Group A begin on September 26 at 11:00 a.m. EST. The games are going to be broadcast on the ESL CS:GO primary and secondary Twitch channels.
In addition to the main tournament, there is also going to be a Freedom Match. This is going to be a best-of one Showmatch on Stage with teams consisting of pro players. It also serves as the world premiere of the Cache Remake. The Cache was a bomb defusal map that was first introduced in 2011. However, pending its rework, the map was removed from the pool in March 2019. It will be exciting to see what changes are included with the remade map.
