ZEN Invitational with $20K

ESL Australia has announced the 'ZEN Esports Network CS:GO Invitational', which will take place at - The Palms at Crown in Melbourne, Australia from January 14-15. The event will feature two parts, an offline qualifier for the ZEN APAC League and a four-team competition with $20,000 AUD (approximately $14,500 USD) up for grabs.

The venue was the home of Australia's largest CS:GO tournament to date, the Crown's Invitational in October 2015, which Virtus.pro and Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares's Cloud9 were invited to attend.

At that event, many Australians will remember Iain "⁠SnypeR⁠" Turner's Immunity pulling off an upset against Cloud9 in their semi-final match 2-1 and Chad "⁠SPUNJ⁠" Burchill's Renegades narrowly losing to Virtus.pro in the other semi-final. Eventually, the Poles won that event from down under, after defeating the best teams that Australia had to offer.

The first day of the ZEN Invitational will showcase the offline qualifier with the following four teams:

Immunity

Parallax

Grinny Bankers

Legacy OCE

Immunity and Parallax were invited to the offline qualifier due to finishing top four at the ESL Australia & NZ Championship Season 2 Finals last month.

Grinny Bankers and Legacy OCE, have both secured their spots to this event by capturing the top two placings of the online open qualifier a week ago. These four teams will compete for the two available Oceanic spots in the ZEN Asia-Pacific League. ESL Australia will reveal the best-of-three match-ups later.

Four more teams will be displayed for day two of the Invitational, as followed:

Tainted Minds

Chiefs

TBA

TBA

Tainted Minds and Chiefs have been invited to the final day of the Invitational, where both teams have claimed their spots for the ZEN League. They will be pit against two other 'high-profile' teams, which will be revealed closer to the event at a further notice. 

The strongest candidates for these two unknown teams are Renegades and Winterfox. Others have speculated international teams from Asia, Europe and North America. These four teams will clash in a best-of-three single-elimination format with money on the line.

The prize distribution for day two of the Invitational can be found below:

1. $10,000 AUD (~$7,250)
2. $5,000 AUD (~$3,630)
3-4. $2,500 AUD (~$1,815)
3-4. $2,500 AUD (~$1,815)

The event will strictly allow attendees over the age of fifteen. For those who are interested, you can order your tickets here. For the online viewers, you can catch all the action live on ESL's main twitch channel here.

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