Team Vitality and Natus Vincere won their play-in stage matches on Sunday to qualify for the Fall Final of the BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 in Copenhagen.
The teams join Astralis, which qualified out of the play-in stage on Saturday, as well as Ninjas in Pyjamas, Heroic and FaZe Clan. The latter three advanced by winning their groups in the group stage.
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 were best-of-three and the winners of each group advanced straight to the Fall Final. The remaining nine teams moved to the seeded play-in stage to compete for three more Fall Final berths.
On Sunday, Vitality and NaVi each needed a win in the second round of the play-in stage to move on to the Fall Final, and both came through with 2-0 sweeps.
Vitality bested BIG 16-11 on Anubis and 16-8 on Inferno.
Leading the way for Vitality was Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut of France with 45 kills and a plus-12 kills-to-deaths differential. Impressive in the loss for BIG was Poland’s Mateusz “mantuu” Wilczewski, who had 52 kills and a plus-24 K-D differential.
NaVi toppled G2 Esports on Inferno and Mirage, both by a 16-14 margin.
NaVi was led by Ukrainians Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, who had 54 kills and a plus-18 K-D differential, and Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy. b1t had 49 kills and a plus-16 differential.
The qualifiers will meet in the $425,000 Fall Final from Nov. 22-26 in Copenhagen.
BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 Final prize pool and points distribution:
1-3. $27,500, 2,400 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Final — Ninjas in Pyjamas, Heroic, FaZe Clan
4-6. $17,500, 1,800 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Final – Astralis, Team Vitality, Natus Vincere
7-9. $8,500, 800 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Showdown – Team Liquid, BIG, G2 Esports
10-12. $5,666, 300 BLAST Premier points, qualifies to Fall Showdown — OG, Evil Geniuses, Complexity Gaming
–Field Level Media