OpTic invited to ESL One Cologne

13-5-2017 17:01

The North American side OpTic Gaming has been confirmed for ESL One Cologne, finalizing the list of teams invited to the event.

After a successful period at the end of 2016, when they won ELEAGUE Season 2, finished second at ECS Season 2 and qualified for the Major, OpTic have had a tough time, with a bad Major performance at the start of 2017 followed by the departure of their in-game leader Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz.

The North American side has been fielding substitutes ever since, but still managed decent placings at the last two events they attended, cs_summit and IEM Sydney 2017, where they finished above the likes of North and Cloud9.

OpTic will be hoping they can find a stable fifth before Cologne

With this announcement out, ESL has filled the list of teams that will be invited to the tournament, and only the four qualifier teams left to be decided.

Except Astralis, who turned down an invitation in April, the only notable squad to miss out on a spot amongst the invited teams is Gambit, the CIS side that has been a stable contender ever since adding Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko and Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov to their ranks.

The team list for ESL One Cologne is now as follows:

SK	fnatic	Natus Vincere	Virtus.pro
FaZe	Ninjas in Pyjamas	G2	North
Cloud9	Immortals	MOUZ	OpTic
EU qual.	EU qual.	NA qual.	TBA

🇺🇸 #GreenWall represent! 🇺🇸@OpTicGaming will be tearing up #ESLOne Cologne! pic.twitter.com/JJUZ0mYBAj
— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) May 13, 2017

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.

gl NA dream Xd

2017-05-13 17:02

1 reply

C9 and liquid both better

2017-05-13 17:28

Esl loves gambit

4 replies

too much love, I'd say

2017-05-13 17:03

ESforce guys said if they invite zeus they'll drop out of wesa and stop competing in their tournaments

2017-05-13 17:07

2 replies

Sause or b8?

2017-05-13 17:38

truth cant lose like 30% of your wesa teams

2017-05-13 17:48

WTF!!!!?

no gambit...

rip Gambit

EZ JR

wasted spot xd

NA on fire

no gambit invite gg retards

#justESLthings

So is jasonr permanent?

good question, pls bump until someone comes in with a source. all i got is thorin and these people treating jasonR like hes permanent but the last info i have was that he was just a standin.

2017-05-13 18:12

And not Gambit? ESL FCK OFF

no Gambit?

invite trash teams like c9 and optic and dont invite gambit

7 replies

Easy to tell gambit would not be final invite because the latest teams invited are supposed to be bottom of their groups, aka "trash teams" being invited. I think I Liquid would have been a better pick though, considering they got to the finals of the last cologne and are on the rise again.

2017-05-13 17:37

6 replies

thats the problem that last cologne was a year ago, now they are bad

2017-05-13 17:56

the problem with that is that liquid will have the easiest qualifier of their lives here in NA, meanwhile gambit are shit online and have to go through half of europe. so liquid will certainly be there anyway, but very questionable whether gambit will. btw who the hell is that last TBA spot for?

2017-05-13 18:14

BIG because ESL Meisterschaft

2017-05-13 18:24

3 replies

the meisterschaft article only says that they are invited to the closed qualifier tho :O

2017-05-13 18:26

oh yeah apparently it will be a chinese team wiki.teamliquid.net/counterstrike/ESL/On..

2017-05-13 18:34

omfg what a waste...

2017-05-13 18:43

Wasted spot

i feel like theyre inviting teams for publicity not inviting who deserves it

OH REALLY?

2017-05-13 17:08

dumb... could have gotten an a lot better team as an invite, for example Heroic

WASTED SPOT

TBA is invite or what?

I'm convinced that it's for the CN qual. wiki.teamliquid.net/counterstrike/ESL/On..

2017-05-13 18:16

They had to invite an NA team for those who complains about Gambit

Where is Gambit? :c

INVITE GAMBIT FFS -_-

Not inviting Gambit? N1 ESL, I hope they qualify and destroy Optic 16-0

u fuckin kiddin me ? ahahaha let them play a bo5 aganist gambit . it will end 3-0 . how the hell these guys invite a unstable team which is playing with 4 players and 1 stand-in instead of a solid team like gambit . just shame .

2017-05-13 17:04

NiP, IMT, C9 and OpTic: all wasted spots. Gambit would do 10x better than any of them.

this +1 they are just in it for more autographs not good cs

2017-05-13 17:09

Immortals is not a wasted spot.

IMT always choke and fail at the non-IEM $250k+ tournaments, not expecting anything different here.

2017-05-13 17:10

well imt had better runs recently than c9 or nip so they are justifiable, but gambit not being here sucks anyway.

lets not forget gambit won a tournament with C9 and imt pretty easily not looking at the g2 match and got 2nd at summit (Actually played SK close unlike optic lmao 32-9) beating teams like optic

C9 and IMT I can understand, but nip and optic instead of gambit and HR...what a shame

sad really, people nowadays try to justify these invites because of big fanbase, ain't about skill anymore.

2017-05-13 17:35

2 spots wasted on NA teams and no Gambit?

2017-05-13 17:05

RIP GAMBIT

Good luck to Astralis, Gambit and HellRaisers Kappa

Astralis declined they spot.ANd even after that they didn't invite Gambit

I know

2017-05-13 17:40

expected

2017-05-13 17:15

WTF no gambit????

No Gambit, No HellRaisers. but invite NiP and OG. n1 ESL

2017-05-13 17:16

NiP better than HR and OG so

5 replies

Lul why do you think That

NiP 2-0'd HR the other day but it was on Online and NiP usually wins over OpTic especially since optic isn't really a "team" atm since they don't have a stable 5th. Also, I know NiP can return to form, they have done it before and it can happen again.

2017-05-13 17:41

The online match wss basically playing for nothing anymore so they probably didnt care. Not really the best match you can determine NiP is better, HR is better than both

2017-05-13 17:45

that was an Online match where Hellraisers choked the first map and played like shit right after

2017-05-13 17:46

ye I'd like to know the same thing.. most of the recent LAN matches between HR and NiP ended with HR being victorious

2017-05-13 17:44

ez for JasonR

2017-05-13 17:17

Gambit? One of three teams in the best form at the moment is not invited,fucking ESL idiots!

the vantages to have a HUGE org, they don't deserve.

2017-05-13 17:19

RIP Liquid invited! We smart, we loyal, we friendly, we are from BRAZIL! Kreygasm

2017-05-13 17:23

LOL ??

2017-05-13 17:36

Nice event

2017-05-13 17:42

THANK HEAVENS

2017-05-13 17:43

ESL invite MVP PK !! Pleas

2017-05-13 17:52

2017-05-13 18:01

Lul No Gambit .... Invited trash navi

2017-05-13 18:09

no Gambit, no HR? wow alright. still a stacked af event but would be better if either of those were invited

omg nice invites thx ESL (idiots)

2017-05-13 18:19

wasted spot

2017-05-13 18:21

2017-05-13 18:40

esl just ignoring Gambit. gg wasted spot

2017-05-13 18:41

Asia should stay from big tournaments. Even Tier 1 asian team is equal to Tier 2 or 3 EU team.

2017-05-13 18:42

Who cares about Gambots, OpTic is better /close

2017-05-13 18:47

The tournament is not a major, which will hurt their viewership hard. So they invite everyteam with a big fanbase and lets be honest: NiP, C9 and Optic have much more fans then gambit (C9 and NiP have the most fans over all other teams) but also their fans come from T1 countries you make more money off per 1.000 viewers.

2017-05-13 18:58

Honestly, I think that C9 & OpTic are pretty much "wasted spots". ESL should've invite Liquid (Cologne 2016 finalists) & Gambit (one of the best teams recently) instead of them. But we all already know it's for the viewership, since C9 & some other teams have shit loads of fans, and since it's not a major anymore - they need to get views somehow.

2017-05-13 19:07