A look at the finalist: WORTEX
BESL Pro Season 3 finals are going to kick off on the 1st of June at Kipsala exhibition center in Riga, Latvia with the event being hosted as part of HyperTown RIX 2019 urban & esports festival. Tickets can be found here!
The culmination of €9,000 CS:GO competition is going to feature the four best teams from the online stage. These teams are going to continue playing out the single elimination playoff bracket with all the games being played as a best-of-three series.
The winner of the event is not only going to be crowned as the best team in Baltic states, taking home the beautiful BESL Pro Season 3 champions trophy, but will also receive the lion share of the prize pool in form of €2,500!
As we’re still waiting for the event itself to come along, let’s take a closer look at the teams that made it to the finals this time!
WORTEX
We’re opening up this season’s ‘A look at the finalist’ series with the incredibly consistent Estonians of WORTEX, who have now managed to reach the LAN finals for the third time in a row!
WORTEX came out of the swiss group stage boasting a win-loss record of 3-2 as they scored victories over Team Titan, REVERSECARD and LESGEDI, but suffered losses against MALCO and ayned.
In their ¼ final game, Estonians had to overcome the Lithuanians of alltheRAGE, who, up until that point, were still undefeated as they swept the swiss group stage with a clean 3-0 win-loss record.
But, despite the odds not being in their favor, WORTEX came out clutch when it was needed the most. In a closely contested two map derby, Estonians pulled off the upset against alltheRAGE with scorelines of 28:26 on train and 16:14 on nuke, thus earning their third consecutive LAN finals spot in BESL Pro competitions.
To find out a little bit more about WORTEX’s kitchen, our head admin Gekons sat down to have a chat with Estonian captain zteeek.
Congratulations on reaching the LAN finals for the third time in a row! As I already said in one of my tweets, I think that this streak earns you huge street cred in Baltics as you guys aren’t one of those insta-lock teams for LAN finals like wolsung or 1337HUANIA, but you still manage to do it every single time. Going back to early April, when the season started, how did you view your chances to once again replicate the success you had in the last two seasons?
I think by now we already consider ourselves a consistent top3-4 team in the Baltic states. If there are no interfering factors and we play our A-game, then we should always power through to the LAN finals. This time the ride was bumpier than usual, but we still made it in the end and that’s all that matters.
Your journey began in the swiss group stage where after three weeks of play you guys were down 1-2 with the most recent loss coming by the hands of your Estonian colleagues ayned, who managed to snatch the W from you as you accidentally screwed up the veto process. Looking back at it, do you still think that things would’ve gone differently if it wasn’t for the veto screw-up or were they actually the better team that day?
I don’t know really. Ayned is a fantastic up-and-coming team and they’ve already surprised everyone with their recent level of play. It could’ve been anyone’s game if I didn’t mess up the banning phase, but on vertigo we literally had no chance.
At that point you had your backs against the wall as you couldn’t afford any more losses or you would be eliminated. With no more room for error, how did you guys manage to turn it all around and finish off the stage with two victories against REVERSECARD and LESGEDI in week 4 & 5 respectively?
Well, being one loss away from elimination was definitely a little bit of a reality check for us. But, the thought of “hey, you’re borderline getting eliminated” woke up the ‘tiger’ in us and from that point onwards we started focusing more on the game and playing like an actual team. Everyone was super motivated to still make it!
Against REVERSECARD - we knew we had the advantage and they’re the underdogs, but we still couldn’t let our guard down, since their roster consists of highly skilled individual players. In the end, though, everything worked out in our favor as we kept our cool and won the Bo3 series pretty convincingly.
As for the game against LESGEDI - we’ve always liked playing against nyte, ZIILA & co. I think that’s because our playstyle matches well against theirs. However, this time around they had ex-WASD players such as Gaborik and ViztA on their side and that did scare us a little bit. The game was a close one as we both won our own map picks pushing the series to map 3, train, where our great CT side let us come back from 6:12 deficit and secure a spot in the playoffs.
In your ¼ final game you were matched up against then still undefeated Lithuanians of alltheRAGE. Truth be told, though, they hadn’t faced either of wolsung or 1337HUANIA yet, so their placing in the BESL Pro power rankings was up in the air. Nevertheless, the majority of playoff bracket predictions saw you being put as underdogs in the series. What was your first reaction when you saw the playoff bracket? Did you feel confident going up against alltheRAGE?
Honestly, we’re not really fazed by Lithuanian teams, apart from maybe 1337HUANIA, so yeah, I would say that we felt pretty confident going into the game. In my head we were always the favourites and they were the underdogs, but I completely understand people predicting them to win against us as they did have better recent performances in both BESL and BEL.
The first two seasons of BESL Pro were played out using the traditional league format of round-robin, but this time around things were different as teams were competing in the swiss format groups while transitioning into playoffs a bit earlier than the LAN finals. Now that you have been through the process of qualifying to LAN finals in both the formats, which one do you prefer and why?
I don’t really have a favourite, both formats are okay. I might be leaning a little bit more towards swiss format just because you always play against teams that have the same “record” as you which means that all the games are balanced. Also, the regular season is shorter in swiss format and we don’t have to play like 8-9 weeks of round-robin before we get to the brackets. So yeah, if I had to pick one I would probably go with swiss.
Moving on to the LAN finals in Riga. In your semi-final game you’re going to be facing the defending champions in form of wolsung. Last season in playoffs you managed to avoid them as you were placed on the other side of the bracket. However, you did play against them in the regular season and back then they showed no mercy destroying you in a one-sided 4:16 affair on mirage. It’s clear that, on paper, you are the underdogs here. With that being said - how do you view your chances going up against these guys? In what aspects, if any, do you think you hold an advantage over them?
Obviously it’s going to be a hard match to win as they probably are the favourites to win the whole event once again, but it’s a good chance for us to prove our worth. I definitely think we have a chance to upset here, but we can’t afford to make any mistakes and everybody on our team has to be on point. With that being said, I’m hoping to put up a good fight against them!
If you manage to defy the odds and upset wolsung in your semi-final game in front of their home crowd, who do you think is going to come out on top on the other side of the bracket and how do you view your chances of winning against them in the grand final?
I would say that it will probably be 1337HUANIA taking the W in the Lithuanian duel as they are the more experienced team. If we manage to win against wolsung, then we have a very good chance to win the entire event, because we’ve won against 1337HUANIA before and we can do it again, but it’s definitely not going to be easy.
Thanks for your time! I wish the best of luck to you and your team in Riga! Do you have any final words or shoutouts you want to give?
Big thanks to WORTEX organisation for the continuous support and also thanks to the whole BESL Pro team for organizing this event once again. Can’t wait to play on stage in front of the crowd! If you want to support our team then feel free to follow us on twitter to keep up to date.
Stay tuned as even though the online portion of the season has come to an end, our news section is still going to be filled with interesting content such as interviews with the teams that made it to the finals and the big LAN finals preview article to let you guys know what to expect from the matches happening at HyperTown Riga Urban & eSports festival!
BESL Pro Season 3 is a 7 week battle between the sixteen best Baltic state CS:GO teams for their share of the €9,000 prize pool and the chance to acquire themselves one of the four spots at this season’s LAN finals held in Riga, Latvia at Kipsala exhibition center with the event itself taking place on 1st of June.
Want to attend the LAN finals? Grab yourself a ticket HERE!
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Article by: Bruno ‘Gekons’ Gailītis
