PGL Major: Kraków 2017
PGL Major: Kraków 2017, also known as PGL Major 2017 or Kraków 2017, was the eleventh "" . It was organized by PGL and held in Kraków, Poland from July 16 to 23, 2017. It featured sixteen professional CS:GO teams from around the world. Eight teams qualified directly based on their top eight placement in the previous Major, ELEAGUE Major 2017, while another eight teams qualified through the Offline Major Qualifier. The PGL Major was the fourth consecutive major with a prize pool of 1,000,000. The playoffs consisted of eight teams. Astralis, Fnatic, Gambit Esports, North, SK  Gaming, and Virtus.pro were returning Legends while BIG and Immortals were new Legends. FaZe Clan and Natus Vincere lost their Legends status after failing to advance from the group stage. The grand finals featured two underdogs: Gambit Esports, which defeated Fnatic and Astralis, and Immortals, which defeated BIG and Virtus.pro. The Major concluded with Gambit defeating Immortals 2–1 in a relatively close best-of-three series, marking just the third time a non-European team won a Major (the Brazilian Luminosity/SK roster won two Majors) and the first time an Asian team won a Major. Format. The format remained  the same as the previous Major. The top eight teams from Atlanta 2017 ("Legends") were automatically invited to Kraków 2017. The remaining eight spots were filled by teams that advanced from the PGL Major Krakow 2017 Main Qualifier. The Krakow 2017 Main Qualifier was a 16-team Swiss-system tournament tournament consisting of the bottom eight teams from Atlanta 2017, as well as eight teams promoted from four regional qualifiers. The top eight teams at the Main Qualifier, teams with three wins, then advanced to the Major as the "Challengers". The group stage of the Major was also a 16 -team Swiss-system group stage. The top eight teams at the end of the group stage, teams with three wins, advanced to the playoff stage and became the new Legends. Teams with three losses were eliminated, but earned an invite to the next Major's offline qualifier. All playoff matches were best-of-three, single elimination. Map Pool. The map pool was changed for this major. Dust II was taken out of the active map pool and Valve reintroduced Inferno, which had been taken out of the map pool and revamped. The veto process was also changed for best-of -one games. One team decided whether to veto maps first or second. The team that vetoes first removed two maps. The second team vetoed three maps. The first team then chose one of the two remaining maps. The second team then chose the side it wanted to start on. The best-of-three veto process was unchanged. Each team first banned a map, leaving a five-map pool. Each team then chose a map, with the opposing team selecting which side they wanted to start on for their opponent's map choice. The two map picks were the first two  maps in the best-of-three. The teams then each banned one more map, leaving one map remaining for the best-of-three decider if necessary. Major Qualifier. Regional Qualifiers. Asia Minor. A total of eight teams will compete in the Asia Minor. Two teams will be invited and the other six will qualify in their regional qualifiers. These teams include one team from East Asia, one team from the Middle East, one team from China, one team from Oceania, and two teams from the India & Southeast Asia qualifier. Teams were split up into two groups. It was played out  like the old group stages in a major, most recently being at ESL One Cologne 2016. In Group A, Flash and Renegades easily took care of Signature and Spotnet, respectively. Flash then took down Renegades in the winner's match to take first seed in the group. Signature defeated Spotnet in a close 2–0 series, and Renegades defeated Signature in the decider match, 2–1. In Group B, TyLoo easily took care of 7642 while Immunity needed to take almost the full 30 rounds to take down MongolZ. TyLoo then defeated Immunity 16–4 to take first seed in the group. 7642  fell to MongolZ in the loser's match 0–2, but Immunity again defeated MongolZ in the decider match to move on to the final four. TyLoo and Renegades won their respective maps and it came to the decider map. The third map ended up being a battle between each team's newly acquired players, with TyLoo picking up Hansel "BnTet" Ferdinand from Indonesia and Renegades signing Noah "Nifty" Francis from the United States. In the end, Renegades ended up with the win in overtime to move a step closer to the major qualifier. Immunity pulled off an upset win against  Flash and both Australian teams moved on to winner's finals. In winner's finals, very lopsided matches took place, as Renegades won the first map 16–5, Immunity won the second map 16–5, and Renegades won the third map 16–4 to guarantee a spot at the major qualifier. In loser's semifinals, TyLoo fell behind early in the first map, but came back to take it; TyLoo then carried the momentum to the second map and dominated Flash and moved on to face Immunity. In loser's final, TyLoo swept up Immunity with ease and took the second Asian spot  in the major qualifier. Renegades met TyLoo once again in the Asia Minor finals. This time, Renegades came up on top after a game three overtime win and took the first seed in the Asia Minor after finally defeating its Asian rival. CIS Minor. A total of eight teams will compete in the Commonwealth of Independent States Minor. The eight teams that participated in this minor all qualified through the closed qualifier. In the closed qualifier, twelve teams are invited and four teams qualify through an online open qualifier. Teams were separated into four groups of four and the top  two teams moved on in each group to the closed qualifier. Two teams in the minor qualified for the main qualifier. Spirit Academy and Vega Squadron won close games in the initial matches, but Vega easily took the winner's match to take the top seed for Group A. Tengri defeated Nemiga in the loser's match and then got revenge on Spirit Academy to take the second seed. Both second seeds won the initial matches, as Quantum Bellator Fire (QBF) defeated Team Spirit and pro100 defeated Spartak Esports. QBF took a close winner's match 16–14 against pro100 to  take the top seed of Group B. Team Spirit fell to Spartak in the loser's match, but it was pro100 to come out on top in the decider's match. Vega easily took down pro100. Tengri had a little bit of a tougher time but still managed to close it out against QBF relatively easily. In the loser's bracket, pro10 took care of QBF relatively easily to move on toe loser's finals. In a tense winner's finals, Vega defeated Tengr in the first game 19-16 and the second game went in favor of Tengri, 16–13 . Tengri then dominated the third game to secure a spot at the major qualifier. Vega and pro100 were in a hotly contested best of three, but it was the Russian team that came up on top, with the scores being 22–19, 14–16, and 16–11. Vega secured its second straight major qualifier spot. Tengri and Vega fought again and this time Vega took down Tengri to obtain the top seed at the minor. Europe Minor. All teams in the European Minor were required to compete in a closed qualifier. In the closed qualifier, 8 teams were invited and 8 other teams  qualified through three different open qualifiers. The teams will play in a Swiss system tournament and the top 8 teams move on to the closed qualifier. In the closed qualifier, the teams will be separated into two groups of four teams. Two teams from each group move on to a four team, double elimination playoff bracket. The top three teams advance to the main qualifier. Ballistix Gaming upset Team EnVyUs in the first match of the minor after taking a dominant lead and then closing it out before EnVyUs could complete its comeback. BIG had an easy time against Team  Kinguin. In the winner's match, Ballistix had a 11–4 lead at the half, but BIG was able to bring it back and take first seed in the group, 16–14. EnVyUs was able to defeat Kinguin after a slow start in the loser's matchup. In the decider's match of Group A, the French team took revenge on Ballistix and take the second spot in the group after two close games, including an overtime game for the second map. In Group B, PENTA Sports came back from a 1–9 deficit to win the game 16–14 over iGame.comTeam Dignitas handily  defeated Team LDLC.com and PENTA defeated Dignitas to claim the first seed in the group. iGame continued to surprise as the underdog of the group, but LDLC was able to take it over the edge to eliminate iGame from the tournament. Dignitas easily defeated LDLC in the first match of the decider's series; the second match was much closer as LDLC made a massive comeback to win 16–14. In the final group stage map of the Kraków minors, Dignitas edged out LDLC in overtime to take the final spot in the European Minor playoffs. In bracket play, Dignitas defeated  BIG in one triple overtime game and one blowout to guarantee a spot at the main qualifier. PENTA defeated EnVyUs in the other series with relative ease in the third game. Dignitas was able to convincingly take out PENTA in the second map, but two close losses allowed PENTA to move on to the finals. BIG defeated EnVyUs to secure the last spot at the major qualifier and EnVyUs was eliminated despite being hugely favored to make it out of the minor. This was the first time EnVyUs's in game leader Vincent "Happy" Cervoni will not play at a  major. BIG continued its run in the loser's bracket by taking out Dignitas in two 16-14 victories and then blew PENTA out of the water to claim the top seed at the major despite struggling the first day. Americas Minor. Two teams were invited to the Americas minor. One team out of a pool of 512 from South America qualified for the minor. The last five teams came from the North American closed qualifier. In that closed qualifier, 8 teams qualified through the open qualifier and 8 more teams were invited. The top five teams moved on to  the Americas minor. In the minor, two teams moved on to the major. Immortals and Luminosity won their games as the two Brazilian teams faced off in the winner's match. Immortals convincingly won the match between the two to take the first seed. compLexity and NRG duked it out in the loser's match, but it was NRG taking the first game in double overtime and convincingly taking the second game to move on. Luminosity and NRG fought in the decider's match and it was Luminosity taking the 2–0 win, with both maps being a very close 16 -14 scoreline. Cloud9 started Group B strong with a 16–1 win over paiN Gaming and Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) took down a Misfits team that was without its in-game leader Sean "seang@res" Gares due to a wedding and its AWPer Shahzeeb "ShahZaM" Khan. Cloud9 took the first seed of the group after edging out CLG. paiN took a 2–0 upset win over Misfits in the loser's match, including a comeback win on the second map. In the decider's match, CLG took a huge lead in the first game of the first half (13-2), but paiN started  a comeback but fell short. In the second map, CLG cleaned up the third Brazilian team after paiN started another comeback to reach the final four. Cloud9 took down Luminosity in the first game after a close first half and ran away with the game in the second. In the second game, Cloud9 came back from a deficit and took the series in overtime. Immortals had some trouble with CLG, and the Brazilians pulled away with both games despite removing CS:GO veteran Lincoln "fnx" Lau from the lineup due to internal problems. Luminosity had a 12–3 lead in the  first game, but CLG made the comeback to take the first game. CLG had a 13–3 lead, but losing an anti-economy round started a comeback for the other side as Luminosity came alive this time. However, CLG barely took it over the line to take it 16–14. CLG did not find the same success as it did against Luminosity as it fell to Cloud9 2–0. Cloud9 then defeated Immortals to take the top seed for the Americas Minor. This was also the first time Cloud9 defeated Immortals in a series on LAN. Main Qualifier. Teams. The main qualifier will  be a sixteen team swiss tournament, where after the Day 1 games, teams will play other teams with the same win–loss record. Every round will consist of one game. In addition, teams will not play the same team twice unless necessary. Any team with three wins would qualify for the major, and any team with three losses would be eliminated. The qualifier will be played in Bucharest, Romania. In the first round, teams from pool 1 will be matched up against teams in pool 4. Teams in pool 2 will play teams in pool 3. In the second round , the winners in the first round will face each other in the "high" matches; the losers will face each other in the "low" matches. In the third round, the winners of the high matches from round two will face each other. The winners of these two matches will qualify for the major. The losers of the high round and the winners of the low round will face each other in the "mid" matches. The losers from the previous low matches will face each other in round three's low matches. The losers of these low matches are eliminated. Twelve teams  remain in the Qualifier. In the fourth round, the losers of the high matches and the winners of the low matches will face each other in round four's high matches. The winners of the high matches qualify for the major. The losers of the mid matches and the winners of the low matches will face each other in the low matches of round four. The losers of these matches are eliminated from the Qualifier. Six teams remain. In the last round, the remaining teams will face off. The winners of these matches will qualify for the major and the  losing teams will be eliminated. The Ninjas in Pyjamas, after missing its first ever major at ELEAGUE and failed to be Legends for the first time at ESL One Cologne 2016, failed to qualify for the major qualifier and the European Minor after losing to Finland's iGame.com in the first round, losing to Sweden's Red Reserve in second round, defeating Sweden's Epsilon eSports in the third round, and losing to Turkey's Space Soldiers in the fourth round, failing to attend its second straight major. Broadcast Talent. Host Interviewer Fluff Commentators Analysts Observers Broadcasts. All streams were  broadcast on Twitch in various languages. Teams Competing. The top eight teams from ELEAGUE Major 2017 (Legends) were joined by the eight teams from the main qualifier (Challengers). Prior to the major, changes took place. Jesper "JW" Wecksell and Robin "flusha" Rönnquist, after transferring to and playing in ELEAGUE with GODSENT, transferred back to Fnatic. GODSENT acquired Joakim "disco doplan" Gidetun and reacquired Simon "twist" Eliasson in the exchange. SK Gaming, after benching him, traded Lincoln "fnx" Lau to Immortals and acquired after Ricardo "fox" Pacheco fulfilled his duty as a stand-in for SK Gaming. fox played with SK  Gaming at ECS Season 2 Finals and the ELEAGUE Major 2017, where the team placed third place at both events, losing to Astralis and Virtus.pro, respectively. fox then went on to join Team Dignitas. After a few months playing with Immortals, fnx was benched on that team due to internal issues. He was replaced by Vito "kNg" Giuseppe. North acquired Philip "aizy" Aistrup from FaZe Clan and released Ruben "RUBINO" Villarroel. FaZe Clan then bought out Bosnian player Nikola "NiKo" Kovač from mousesports. NiKo officially joined the team after DreamHack Las Vegas 2017. RUBINO went on to join Team Dignitas 's newly formed European roster. mousesports signed Robin "ropz" Kool and activated Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný from the roster to complete its five-man roster. Timo "Spiidi" Richter was moved to the inactive roster. Legendary Natus Vincere former player and current coach Sergey "starix" Ischuk leaves the team and Na'Vi's manager analyst Andrey "Andi" Prokhorov takes over the coaching role. Only Denis "seized" Kostin remains from the original Na'Vi lineup after starix departed and its former team captain Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko was released by the team in favor of Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and went on to play for Gambit Gaming  (now rebranded as Gambit Esports) last year. starix signed with Team Spirit as a player and will play in the CIS qualifier. Arguably the biggest change of the teams in the major was the "French shuffle," which was led by Nathan "NBK-" Schmitt and Richard "shox" Papillon. NBK-. Kenny "kennyS" Schrub and, Dan "apEX" Madesclaire left Team EnVyUs for G2 Esports to join shox and Alexandre "bodyy" Pianaro; in addition, former G2 AWPer Édouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux moved to the coaching position. The remaining two G2 players, Cédric "RpK" Guipouy and Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom, left the team and joined Team EnVyUs . Former NRG Esports players Fatih "" Dayik, Johannes "" Wodarz, and Nikola "LEGIJA" Ninic form Berlin International Gaming, abbreviated as BIG. They also buy out Johannes "nex" Maget from mousesports and Kevin "keev" Bartholomäus from ALTERNATE aTTaX to fill out its roster. PENTA Sports also had big changes to its lineup. After Stefan "stfN" Seier left the team because he could not commit playing full-time, Christian "loWel" Antoran being picked up by mousesports, and Tahsin "tahsiN" Broschk and Mike "mikeS" Tuns leaving the team, PENTA signed four new players. PENTA first signed Miikka "suNny" Kemppi from Finland. After decided to stay  on the team, PENTA filled out its five-man roster by signing Kevin "HS" Tarn from Estonia, Jesse "zehN" Linjala from Finland, and Paweł "innocent" Mocek from Poland. Pre-major ranking. HLTV.org rank teams based on results of teams' performances. The rankings shown below reflect the July 10, 2017 rankings. In addition, a list premier tournaments and relevant major events is listed. These tournaments are part of the list the HLTV.org takes into consideration when calculating the rankings, starting with ESL One Cologne 2016, in which SK Gaming defeated Team Liquid and StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 2, in which  Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated G2 Esports. The rankings concluded with the Esports Championship Series Season 3 Finals, in which SK Gaming defeated FaZe Clan and ESL One: Cologne 2017 in which SK Gaming defeated Cloud9 in the finals. Group stage. The group stage was a sixteen-team Swiss-system tournament in which, after the first round, teams only played other teams with the same win–loss record. Each match was best-of-one, and no team played another team twice. All teams played until they had either won or lost three games: any team with three wins advanced to the  playoff stage, and any team with three losses was eliminated. The group stage and playoffs were played in Kraków, Poland, with group stage played in closed studio and playoffs being held in Tauron Arena Kraków. First round seeding was determined by the following: In the first round, first seeds played a randomly drawn fourth seed, and second seeds played a randomly drawn third seed. After this round, teams were randomly drawn against other teams with the same record (e.g., 1–0 teams against 1–0 teams, 0–1 teams against 0–1 teams). The eight teams to win three (out of a possible five ) games were granted "Legend" status and an automatic invitation to the next Major. Playoffs. Bracket. BIG and Gambit received the top seeds and played a randomly selected opponent among Virtus.pro, Immortals, and Fnatic. BIG received Immortals and Gambit received Fnatic. Among SK Gaming, North, and Astralis, two randomly selected teams from this pool would go on to face each other and the teams would be SK Gaming and Astralis. The remaining two teams, North and Virtus.pro, were paired together. Quarterfinals. Gambit Esports vs. Fnatic. "Casters: James Bardolph & ddk" SK Gaming vs. Astralis. "Casters: Anders Blume & Semmler" BIG vs. Immortals. "Casters : HenryG & Sadokist" North vs. Virtus.pro. "Casters: Anders Blume & Semmler" Semifinals. Gambit Esports vs. Astralis. "Casters: James Bardolph & ddk" Immortals vs. Virtus.pro. "Casters: Sadokist & HenryG" Finals. "Casters: Sadokist & HenryG" AdreN was named the MVP of the tournament. Final standings. The final placings are shown below. Each team's in-game leader is shown first. Post-Major Ranking. The first HLTV.org ranking after the PGL Major came out on July 24, 2017. Showmatch. A showmatch was played before the final set between Gambit Esports and Immortals. The rosters were decided by the community on Reddit's CS:GO community (r/GlobalOffensive). The  community was to decide teams among twelve personalities, but it was determined that the casting duo Daniel "ddk" Kapadia and James Bardolph were to be captains and choose their teams.