The review of BLAST Pro Series Istanbul 2018

The tournament BLAST Pro Series has recently come to the end, which had been hosted in Istanbul. The time has come to make a conclusion.

The general impression about the tournament

It’s worth to remind that BLAST Pro Series Istanbul 2018 took place in the largest city of Turkey, Istanbul, on September 28-29.

This championship was unusual enough like the previous BLAST Pro Series and all further tournaments in this series. The last two maps of the final were intriguing and duels were interesting. 1x1 matches were hosted, using various weapons like M4A4/M4A1-S, Desert Eagle, AK47, CZ75, and AWP.

The teams-losers

Cloud9

The CS:GO roster of Cloud9 had been changed right before the tournament. C9 bought Flusha from Fnatic and moved him to the main roster instead of STYKO, who was on loan to mousesports. As it was expected, the team was not able to prepare well and to create an enough team play to achieve some kind of a success and performed at BLAST Pro Series the worst due to this, having held the last place. C9 received a consolation money prize in the sum of $5,000 for its achievement. Cloud9 managed to beat only Space Soldiers. They lost to the rest of participants of the tournament. Flusha’s and the team’s potential was not fully revealed at this tournament. It’s likely that Cloud9 will come up with something at the next tournament and show a good result.

Virtus.pro

The Polish team has been playing with such roster for two months and it can’t be said that they haven’t had enough time to prepare for the tournament. Among all their opponents, Virtus.pro beat only Cloud9, who was in a bad gaming shape. Due to this, VP didn’t hold the last place but the next one and earned a money prize in the sum of $10,000.

Space Soldiers

It’s difficult to say why Space Soldiers have played so bad at this championship. The team has been playing with such roster since the beginning of February and the players have already managed to team play. The Turkish team achieved victory at DreamHack Austin 2018 in summer and Space Soldiers’ results started becoming worse and worse after that. The team was unlucky to get to the final but they made it to Pro Standoffs, where the players faced their opponents from Ninjas in Pyjamas in duels on aim maps. XANTARES showed the best performance among all players, who became the only member of the team, who had beaten his opponent. Naturally, such result was not enough to win Pro Standoffs and as a result, Space Soldiers placed 4th and earned $15,000 of the prize pool for their efforts. It’s worth to notice that SS were playing in Turkey, on their native territory, however, it didn’t help the team to achieve really good results.

The teams-winners

Ninjas in Pyjamas

The Swedish team didn’t fully meet our expectations and didn’t advance to the final but they played well in the first stage and crushed their opponents in Pro Standoffs. Rez, Lekr0, GeT_RiGhT, and f0rest prevailed over their Turkish opponents in duels and achieved victory in the bonus stage. Due to the fact that NiP placed 3rd as a result, the team earned a money prize in the sum of $25,000. The Swedes received an additional bonus in the sum of $20,000 for their victory in Pro Standoffs, having almost doubled their income.

MIBR

The Brazilians have advanced to the final as it had been expected. They managed to beat Cloud9, Space Soldiers, and Virtus.pro in the group stage, lost to Astralis and made a draw with Ninjas in Pyjamas. MIBG faced the strongest team in the world from Denmark in the final. There, the Brazilian-American team was not able to win a rematch against gla1ve and the company. Due to this, MIBR placed second in the standings and earned a money prize in the sum of $50,000 for their efforts. The team was close to the victory, however, didn’t win a round to get to an overtime and lost.

Astralis

The Danes don’t stop surprising. This team has proved everyone again that holds the first place in the world rate by HLTV.org for a reason. The remarkable fact is that BLAST Pro Series is the first tournament after FACEIT Major. Many people thought that Astralis would not have enough motivation to achieve victory at the Istanbul championship. Despite this, the Danes managed to show an amazing performance in the group stage, having beaten all their opponents, and they prevailed in the final against MIBR after that. The way the final match was carried out can be noticed in a special way. The first map of the grand final was finished very fast with a score 16-3 in the favor of Astralis and the last two maps were over with a score 16-14. Astralis earned the main money prize in the sum of $125,000 for their efforts and great results.