CS:GO StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 4: Preview

This weekend Kiev will host a $300,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event with 16 teams competing in a swiss system format. Let’s take a closer look at the tournament’s format, schedule and participants.

Participants

The list of participants looks very impressive and consists of 10 invited and 6 qualified teams (2 teams from each Europe, North America and Asia).

Invited Teams

• Astralis
• Cloud9
• FaZe Clan
• Fnatic
• G2 Esports
• Gambit Esports
• mousesports
• Natus Vincere
• SK Gaming
• Virtus.pro

Europe

• Heroic
• Team Liquid

North America

• Renegades
• Team Liquid

Asia

• TyLoo
• MVP PK

Format

Group Stage

The group stage will take place on February 17th – 25th behind the closed doors. As an experiment the organizers decided to hold the group stage in a swiss system format with all matches being best-of-three. All 16 teams were divided into four pools according to their positions in the HLTV rankings, with the highest placed teams being seeded into Pool 1 and the lowest placed teams seeded into Pool 4. The teams from Pool 1 will compete with the teams from Pool 4, while the Pool 2 teams will face the teams from Pool 3.

Pool 1	Pool 2	Pool 3	Pool 4
FaZe Clan	mousesports	Gambit Esports	Heroic
SK Gaming	Fnatic	Virtus.pro	Renegades
Cloud9	Astralis	HellRaisers	TyLoo
G2 Esports	Natus Vincere	Team Liquid	MVP PK

Round 1 Matches

FaZe	TyLoo
G2	Renegades
Cloud9	Heroic
SK Gaming	MVP PK
mousesports	Virtus.pro
Astralis	Liquid
Na`Vi	HellRaisers
Fnatic	Gambit

There will be a total of 5 rounds within the group stage, based on their results the best eight teams will advance to the playoffs while the other eight teams will be eliminated.

Playoffs

The playoffs stage will be held on February 23rd – 25th at Kiev Cybersport Arena in front of a live audience. Eight teams will be placed in a single-elimination bracket with best-of-three matches. The decider match for the third place will be played.

Prize Pool Distribution

The prize pool of the event is set at $300,000 and will be distributed among the participating teams as follows:

Place	$ USD
1st	$125,000
2nd	$50,000
3rd-4th	$25,000
5th-8th	$10,000
9th-11th	$6,000
12th-14th	$4,000
15th-16th	$2,500