BESL Pro Season 2 finals are going to kick off on the 20th of October at Saku Suurhall arena in Tallinn, Estonia. The event is hosted as part of the HyperTown Tallinn 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 be placed in a single elimination 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 while taking home the beautiful BESL Pro Season 2 champions trophy, but will also receive the lion share of the prize pool in form of €2,200!

As we’re still waiting for the event to come along, let’s take a closer look at the teams that made it to the finals this time around and get to know them a little bit better!

Note: as of 5th of October, the team previously known as WASD Sports has parted ways with the organisation and has now joined XGR eSports for the time period of the current BESL Pro season. With that change, the former XGR eSports team is now known as XGR-X. Also - a few days later, a similar change happened to the other Estonian LAN finalist namely AUTOCLUTCH, who have now re-joined forces with their previous organisation WORTEX.

XGR eSports

Starting off our ‘A look at the finalist’ series is XGR eSports - the Estonian powerhouse that cruised through the second season with an incredible 14-1 win-loss record. The only game they lost was surprisingly enough not to one of the other LAN finalists, but to Lithuanians of NotLikeThis (5:16 on inferno), who shocked everyone during week 2 of our competition.

Additionally, two teams also managed to snatch a point from XGR eSports by taking the game into overtime and those were - wolsung (19:17 overpass) and FiGURE05 (19:17 overpass).

In order to get a better understanding of how XGR eSports won the regular season and what they think about the finals ahead of them, our head admin Gekons sat down to chat with team’s veteran player Dodz!

Gekons: First of all - props to you guys for almost having the perfect season here at BESL Pro! A bit of a silly question in that regard, but did you actually have it in your mind at the start of the season to go 15-0? Or was the main goal always to just make it to the finals no matter how?

Dodz: No, not really. We had two goals this season. The first one was to qualify for the finals and the second one was to do it by placing first. Obviously, the latter was just a nice bonus added to the former.

 

Gekons: On the very first week you were matched up against Latvians of wolsung. The game was a pretty close one, but you pulled of the victory in the overtime (19:17). Coming into this game, did you expect that big of a resistance from wolsung? Or were you caught off guard by how well they played?

Dodz: They had a solid lineup for that game and we had experienced massive drop in our form both as a team and as individuals during the summer period. We really felt it in that game. Looking back at it, though, I think that we should’ve won it in the regulation time.

 

Gekons: Moving forwards, in the second week of our competition you were matched up against Lithuanians of NotLikeThis, who upset you guys in a pretty one-sided manner (5:16 on inferno). Can you walk us through of what happened in that game? Were they actually doing something unorthodox or was it just an off-day for you guys?

Dodz: We had a terrible game or qualifier the day before the NotLikeThis game, so we were talking on how to fix the mistakes before the game against them. But, it clearly didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. After the game I re-watched the VOD and I noticed that sperr missed like 7 or 8 easy AWP shots when NotLikeThis attacked A site on inferno, so I would say that it definitely was an off-day for us.

 

Gekons: Afterwards, you went on a huge win-streak not dropping a single map till the end of the regular season. In result, you finished #1 which meant that you could pick your semi-final opponents from the #3 and #4 team pool. As we now know, you chose to play against your fellow countrymen of WORTEX. Firsty - do you like the fact that #1 spot gets to choose their opponents, and secondly - could you talk us through the decision of choosing WORTEX over the other two?

Dodz: Choosing the opponent doesn’t make much of a difference for me personally, but when I asked my team who do they want to play shokz said “WORTEX for sure”. However, as I already said - it doesn’t really matter who we face, because we’re aiming to win the whole thing and that means that we have to be good enough to beat any of the 3 remaining teams.

 

Gekons: In your regular season game against WORTEX you scored a somewhat easy 16:5 victory on overpass. Though, seeing how they managed to upset 1337HUANIA in their last game it still seems like there is a level of WORTEX that we have only seen glimpses of. With that in mind - do you think that things are going to be as easy for you guys in Tallinn as they were during the regular season play? Or could things get interesting if WORTEX turn up with their A-game?

Dodz: In theory, it should be an easy game for us, but realistically, you can never know. If we have a bad day and play poorly, but they turn up with their A-game anything could happen!

 

Gekons: The other semi-final is going to be played out between 1337HUANIA and wolsung. What are your thoughts on this match-up? Who do you think is going to win and who would you like to face if you win your semi-final game against WORTEX?

Dodz: It’s probably going to be a really close match between them, though, I’d say that wolsung are slightly favored in my opinion. Like 55-45 favored. Considering our regular season games against both of these teams I’d prefer to face 1337HUANIA in the grand final.

 

Gekons: On a different note - a couple of days ago we learned that you guys are no longer representing WASD Sports and for the LAN finals you’ll be repping the XGR eSports banner. Could you tell us what happened with WASD Sports and why did you decide to go different ways? Also - how did you guys manage to secure the support of XGR eSports on such a short notice?

Dodz: The change was mostly due to bad results ever since May of this year. The whole team got worse and worse as time went by and I guess WASD Sports just decided to pull the plug on this project because of it. After we learned that, ViztA contacted XGR eSports and proposed them a deal which they accepted pretty much instantly.

 

Gekons: Thanks for your time Rainer! Do you have any final words or shoutouts you want to give?

Dodz: Big thanks to XGR eSports for supporting us during the BESL Pro Season 2 LAN finals.

Stay tuned as even though the regular 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 Tallinn Urban & eSports festival!

News article by: Bruno ‘Gekons’ Gailītis