Evil Geniuses caused quite a stir last week in announcing their return to both League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. They then set the esports world aflame when the newly branded CSGO team defeated Astralis 3-1 at ESL One New York, but that hasn’t helped them to avoid an early stumble in Malmo, Sweden.
Evil Geniuses originally started in CS in the early 2000s and eventually shut down their CS division in 2012. The organization attempted to reenter CS competitive play in 2015, but their attempts were thwarted by several players on the roster they looked to acquire being banned for match-fixing.
On September 26, EG announced they had acquired the NRG Esports roster of Vincent “Brehze” Cayonte, Cvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov, Ethan “Ethan” Arnold, Tarik “tarik” Celik, Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz, and coach Chet “ImAPet” Singh.
The rebranded roster went on to take out the champions of three consecutive majors and claimed the ESL One New York title, making their reintroduction to CSGO quite a loud one.
Now both teams are competing at Dreamhack Masters Malmö, and thus far are having very different results.
Astralis have rebounded and look to be in good form after defeating Team Envy 16-7 and G2 Esports 2-0. They now will play Team Vitality for a bye to the playoff semifinals.
Meanwhile, the ESL One New York champions at EG fell to Australia’s Grayhound Gaming 16-10 in their opening round match. They will now face Mousesports in a best-of-three in the loser’s bracket before they can move on for a chance to possibly face Astralis again. Mouz lost to Ninjas in Pyjamas to find themselves on the back foot.
Another powerhouse, Team Liquid, also lost their first round match, 16-9 against OpTic Gaming. A Liquid win over Danish team North would likely see them meet EG in the loser’s bracket.
The Dreamhack Masters Malmö title is up for grabs. Both Liquid and EG have the talent and mindset to overcome a rough start and take home the gold, but they will likely have to get through arguably the best team in the world today in Astralis.
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