ESEA-I S13 Europe week 3 recap

Third week of ESEA Invite Season 13 has come to an end and the top four remains the same. However, there were some interesting points to take away from the matches on de_mill_b2, especially Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom's debut for VeryGames, as well as ESC's solid play.

Third week of ESEA Invite season 13 featured another new map for the CS:GO professional scene, de_mill_b2. The adjusted version of the old CPL map (the difference being a revamped bombsite B) was accepted better than de_dust_se was last week, but we didn't actually see many particularly interesting matches on it.

Ten of the twelve scheduled games were actually played, as one got postponed and another one was a forfeit. Only three of those ten had a somewhat close result with the losing team reaching double digits, while the rest were mostly one-sided. Even out of those three seemingly close matches, Virtus.pro versus fm.TOXiC was the only one where both teams looked to have a chance to win, so all in all it wasn't a very exciting week in ESEA.

Nevertheless, it's still worth recapping what happened so we can keep track of who is on form and who needs to step it up.

Results from the last seven days in ESEA Invite Season 13 Europe:

Week 2 - de_dust_se

Jan 17, 2013	Absolute Legends	vs.	fm.TOXiC	16:6
Week 3 - de_mill_b2
Jan 15, 2013	NiP	vs.	Virtus.pro	16:10
Jan 16, 2013	ESC Gaming	vs.	Absolute Legends	16:5
Jan 16, 2013	fnatic	vs.	mousesports	16:9
Jan 16, 2013	ESC Gaming	vs.	n!faculty	16:9
Jan 17, 2013	NiP	vs.	Anexis	16:9
Jan 17, 2013	Virtus.pro	vs.	fm.TOXiC	16:13
Jan 17, 2013	ASES	vs.	Curse	16:11
Jan 17, 2013	VeryGames	vs.	mousesports	16:2
Jan 20, 2013	n!faculty	vs.	fnatic	16:6
Jan 20, 2013	VeryGames	vs.	Curse	16:8
Jan 20, 2013	Absolute Legends	vs.	ASES	16:0 (forfeit)
Jan 20, 2013	Anexis	vs.	fm.TOXiC	Postponed

NiP and VeryGames continued dominating and sharing the top spot, as they both sit at 6-0 records after adding two more wins this week.

The Swedes opened up the action on de_mill_b2 with Tuesday's only match, recording a 16-10 victory over then 3rd placed Virtus.pro. Two days later they added another win against Anexis with a 16-9 score, and while both of their opponents put up some resistance, the winner was never in question as NiP was ahead at the half 12-3 both times.

Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund top-fragged for the Swedes in those clashes with 26:13 and 24:12 scores, which now makes him the best fragger in the team and 2nd best in the league, taking advantage of Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg's mediocre display on the stat-sheet this week. Alesund is also the league's runner up in damage dealt per round with 96.7, while Adam "friberg" Friberg is right behind as 3rd with 93.7.

GeT_RiGhT led NiP to another two wins

The main story in the competitive scene in the past week was certainly VeryGames' signing of Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom. The Belgian headshot machine made a big step forward in his career by joining the second best team in the world, and on Wednesday we saw him make his debut when VG met mousesports.

That debut was nothing short of amazing as Benrlitom led the charge against the German team, handing out headshots left and right and even clutching no less than 4 rounds. He finished the match with a 26:6 score as VeryGames won 16:2, the biggest win by any team in the league so far. A few days later he had another 26-kill match, top-fragging in a 16-8 win over Curse.

VeryGames seem to have made the perfect move by adding ScreaM

It wasn't all "ScreaM" though, as Kenny "kennyS" Schrub also impressed in the mouz clash with his AWP (20:9 score overall), while the team's in-game leader Kévin "Ex6tenZ" Droolans added 25:12 against Curse to confirm his excellent form (9th in the league in kills per round, 0.80).

ESC Gaming was the only other team to have a perfect record this week, defeating Absolute Legends and n!faculty to climb ahead of Virtus.pro to 3rd place in the standings. Jakub "kuben" Gurczynski was on top of the scoreboard in both clashes (23:11 and 26:12), while Filip "Neo" Kubski and Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas also had 20+ each time. That was a good indication ahead of the Poles' title-winning campaign in Katowice, as their form completely transferred to the LAN tournament on Sunday.

kuben stepped up this week

Absolute Legends did suffer that defeat to ESC, but they also added two victories to their account after that. In a leftover match from week two, they beat fm.TOXiC quite easily on de_dust_se 16-6, while their second win came in form of a forfeit by ASES. They still occupy 5th place in the standings, but now with the same record as 4th placed Virtus.pro, and at the moment they look like the main contender to sneak into the last playoff position if someone above them drops the ball.

Alexander "rdl" Redl was aL's best player in the win over the UK squad (26:11 score), but Andreas "schneider" Lindberg still steals the spotlight overall as he is currently topping the league charts in kills per round (0.93) and damage per round (97.4), continuing his fairy-tale start with a pair of solid performances.

Virtus.pro had a tough week, firstly having to face the unbeatable Ninjas in Pyjamas, and then having problems in their match against fm.TOXiC. They had to dig deep to overcome the UK squad, coming back from a 9-13 deficit to win 16-13. Granted, Virtus.pro had to start the match with 4 members as Dauren "AdreN" Kystaubayev had some issues, so the first four rounds were played 4vs5, which fm.TOXiC naturally took advantage of and took an early lead.

They did manage to recover in the end to notch this important victory, which means the Russian-Ukrainian-Kazakhstani squad still holds a playoff spot, although they dropped down one place to 4th due to their loss to NiP.

It seems that n!faculty is the only remaining team keeping pace as a playoff contender, as they split their matches for the third time in a row, winning against fnatic and losing to ESC. However, they are yet to play against NiP and twice against VeryGames, so they would have to either surprise one of those or play perfectly in the remainder of their matches to climb any further than their current 6th place.

The team that many predicted would be ending up in the top4 was Curse, but the Finns seem to be fading away as they recorded two losses this week. Although losing to VeryGames was expected, they were not supposed to allow ASES get the better of them. They now sit at 8th place with a 2-4 record, 1-3 since Timi "aslak" Verkkoperä joined the team.

natu needs to get Curse back to winning ways as soon as possible

fnatic started the week off with a win against mouz in which their newest recruit Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth excelled (29:18 score), but they finished it off with a tough loss to n!faculty which left them in the same place they were a week ago - 9th. On the bright side, Michael "Friis" Jørgensen did affirm himself as the best AWP in the league so far, increasing his lead over VeryGames' Schrub and now having 76 kills, while the Frenchman sits at 68.

After missing out on the previous week due to monitor problems of one of their players, the UK-Irish-Swedish mixture of fm.TOXiC had a disappointing outing this week. They played two matches on Thursday, but had no success against Absolute Legends and Virtus.pro, while their Sunday clash with Anexis was postponed upon their own request.

At the end of last week, there were three teams without a victory, ASES, Anexis and mousesports. Out of those, ASES were the only ones who managed to snap their losing streak, led by their best player Xavi "Aguila" Casals (27:15) in a 16-11 win over Curse. Unfortunately, they were forced to forfeit their second match due to Vicens "vis" Gonzalez' PC problems and Absolute Legends refusing to postpone, so they didn't get the chance to double their win-count.

And while Anexis can be forgiven for not getting any points this week, as they had to meet NiP and their fm.TOXiC clash was postponed, mousesports continued to disappoint and they remain glued to the bottom of the table after adding two more losses.

karrigan's mousesports struggling at the bottom of the table

ESEA Invite Season 13 Europe standings

#	Team	W	L	RW	RL	Diff	Streak
1.	NiP	6	0	99	42	+57	W6
2.	VeryGames	6	0	96	47	+49	W6
3.	ESC Gaming	5	1	81	56	+25	W5
4.	Virtus.pro	4	2	83	74	+9	W1
5.	Absolute Legends	4	2	79	49	+30	W2
6.	n!faculty	3	3	73	78	-5	W1
7.	fm.TOXiC	2	3	51	64	-13	L3
8.	Curse	2	4	78	86	-8	L3
9.	fnatic	2	4	67	89	-22	L1
10.	ASES	1	5	46	91	-45	L1
11.	Anexis	0	5	56	83	-27	L5
12.	mousesports	0	6	46	96	-50	L6

In the coming week we finally revert to standard maps, with de_train_se on the menu. The juiciest clash should be ESC Gaming vs. Virtus.pro, a repeat of the SLTV StarSeries IV final from back in December, while it should also be interesting to see if Curse can get back to winning ways as they have a tough task today against Absolute Legends and later against the Poles from ESC.

Stay tuned to HLTV.org for the exact schedule as we will update the hot match pages as soon as the teams agree on a date and time, and as always you will be able to find GOTV IPs and stream links here as well.