Ninjas in Pyjamas and Natus Vincere stayed alive in their respective groups at the BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 on Tuesday in Copenhagen.
Ninjas in Pyjamas outlasted Complexity Gaming 2-1 in the lower-bracket final of Group A, while Natus Vincere beat BIG in the Group B lower-bracket final.
The winning teams moved into the grand finals of their respective groups, where a victory would mean automatic qualification into the Fall Final.
NIP opened with a 16-9 win on Mirage, but Complexity countered with a 16-7 result on Overpass. The third map, Nuke, needed overtime before NIP could pull out the clinching win, 22-20.
Daniil ‘headtr1ck’ Valitov of Ukraine led NIP with 66 kills and a plus-17 kills-to-deaths differential. Complexity’s Jonathan ‘EliGE’ Jablonowski led all players with 70 kills on a plus-17.
NaVi defeated BIG 16-11 on Ancient and 16-14 on Mirage. All five players for NaVi finished with positive K-D differentials, led by Romania’s Mihai ‘iM’ Ivan (47 kills, plus-11) and Ukraine’s Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev (42 kills, plus-13).
The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event began with a double-elimination group stage, with the field split into three groups of four teams.
All matches are best-of-three and the winners of each group will advance straight to the Fall Final. The remaining nine teams advance to the seeded play-in stage to compete for three more Fall Final berths.
Play continues Wednesday with two matches:
–Team Vitality vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas (Group A grand final)
–FaZe Clan vs. G2 Esports (Group C lower-bracket final)
BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 Final prize pool and points distribution:
1-3. $27,500, 2,400 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Final — TBD
4-6. $17,500, 1,800 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Final — TBD
7-9. $8,500, 800 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Showdown — TBD
10-12. $5,666, 300 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Showdown — TBD
–Field Level Media