YaLLa announce preliminary Qatar invites

Eternal Fire have committed to a busy April schedule, during which they'll attend three events back-to-back.

YaLLa have announced the six teams invited directly to the Compass Qatar event and adjustments to the tournament's dates, format and prizepool distribution.

Eternal Fire, Astralis, paiN, Virtus.pro, 3DMAX and MIBR have accepted a preliminary invitation. YaLLa has stressed that the final list is subject to changes depending on whether any of the invited teams have to participate in the BLAST.tv Austin Major Regional Qualifiers (MRQ).

MRQ clash causing headaches for YaLLa

The MRQs have been scheduled over the Qatar event, making it impossible to attend both. Virtus.pro and 3DMAX are currently ranked 11th and 12th on the European standings, and if they don't improve their standing to at least the top 10 by the April 7 ranking update, they'll have to play the Major qualifiers and withdraw from Qatar.

This is also making it difficult for the organizers to finalize invites to the closed qualifier, which is due to decide six more main event teams on April 2-3 — a few days before teams learn whether they will play the Major qualifiers.

Read more

BLAST Austin Major MRQs to be played online in all regions

Eternal Fire commit to back-to-back-to-back events

Originally due to take place from April 16-20, YaLLa Compass Qatar will instead conclude on April 19 to "accommodate for travel schedules," an adjustment made due to five of the six invited teams also taking part in IEM Melbourne, which kicks off on April 21.

One of those teams is Eternal Fire, who have agreed to a particularly busy schedule in the last three months of the season:

BLAST Open Lisbon (March 19-30)
PGL Bucharest (April 6-13)
YaLLa Compass Qatar (April 16-19)
IEM Melbourne (April 21-27)
PGL Astana (May 10-18)
IEM Dallas (May 19-25)
BLAST.tv Austin Major (June 3-22)*

* Based on their current standing on the VRS, Eternal Fire would be invited to Stage 3 of the Austin Major, which starts on June 12.

Due to the change of dates, the organizers also changed the grand final format from a best-of-five to a best-of-three, as the semi-finals and grand final will be played on the same day.

Following in the footsteps of PGL and FISSURE, YaLLa has announced that it will split the $600,000 prizepool equally between the organizations and players.

The preliminary invites to YaLLa Compass Qatar are the following: