MOUZ cruised to a 3-0 sweep against Natus Vincere in the grand final Sunday to win the ESL Pro League 18 in Saint Julian’s, Malta.
For their victory at the $850,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event, MOUZ take home the $200,000 first-place prize money and 3,000 BLAST Premier points. In addition, MOUZ qualify for the 2024 IEM Katowice event and the 2023 BLAST World Final.
MOUZ sprinted out to relatively comfortable wins on the first two maps before being pushed on Map 3. After a 16-10 win on Inferno and a 16-9 win on Overpass, the final map was a tight one, with MOUZ ultimately prevailing 19-15 on Mirage.
Three MOUZ players finished with positive kills-to-deaths ratios on the final map, paced by Hungary’s Adam “torzsi” Torzsas at 29-17 (plus-12). NAVI’s Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev of Ukraine finishes plus-3 with 29 kills.
The advantage for MOUZ was much more overwhelming over all three maps, as four players finished with positive K-D ratios against none for NAVI. Joining torzsi (plus-23) were teammates Jimi “Jimpphat” Salo (plus-20) of Finland, David “frozen” Cernansky (plus-12) of Slovakia and Dorian “xertioN” Berman (plus-4) of Israel.
The event began with 32 teams broken up into four groups of eight. Group-stage winners advanced to the quarterfinals; runners-up advanced to the Round of 12 as the high seeds; third-place teams advanced to the Round of 16 as the high seeds; and fourth-place teams advanced to the Round of 16 as the low seeds.
The group stage was triple elimination with upper, middle and lower brackets. All matches other than the grand final (best-of-five) were best-of-three.
ESL Pro League Season 18 prize pool
1. $200,000, 3,000 BLAST Premier points — MOUZ
2. $90,000, 2,000 BLAST points — Natus Vincere
3-4. $50,000, 1,200 points — Monte, ENCE
5-8. $35,000, 500 points — Eternal Fire, Team Vitality, Movistar Riders, G2 Esports
9-12. $25,000 — Complexity Gaming, BIG, 9z Team, FaZe Clan
13-16. $20,000 — Fnatic, Astralis, Virtus.pro, FURIA Esports
17-20. $15,000 — Gamer Legion, MIBR, 5yclone, Team Liquid
21-28. $8,000 — Ninjas in Pyjamas, Grayhound Gaming, Heroic, Evil Geniuses, Imperial Esports, Apeks, Cloud9, Lynn Vision Gaming
29-32. $4,000 — ORKS, Rooster, M80, 9INE
–Field Level Media