PGL Minor Championship preview

We have prepared a preview of the eight teams that are heading into the official European Minor Championship organized by PGL, which will have $50,000 on offer as well as a spot at the MLG Columbus offline qualifier, taking place from January 29-31.

PGL's brand new studio in Bucharest will play host to the European Minor Championship from January 29-31, where eight teams will battle for $50,000 and a spot at the offline qualifier for the next major.

All eight teams came from online qualifiers which overlapped each other for the most part, making it harder for teams to redeem themselves in case they didn't make it on the first try.

Here is the group draw for the PGL Regional Minor Championship Europe:

Group A	Group B
CG	Lemondogs
E-frag.net	DenDD
LDLC White	PixelFire
PENTA Sports	HellRaisers

The group stage will be played in a GSL-style double elimination format, with winners' matches and deciders played in best-of-threes. As usual, two advance to playoffs, which will be played in a best-of-three, single-elimination format.

Without further ado, let's get into the teams and a quick rundown on their chances and history, which is very short in some cases.

CG

William "⁠draken⁠" Sundin

Andreas "⁠mOkEn⁠" Karlsson

Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner

Christian "⁠rezex⁠" Bjerregaard

Jesse "⁠zehN⁠" Linjala

CG, or Cringe Gods, are one of the teams that have very little history behind them. After they qualified for the PGL Minor from the first qualifier, beating HellRaisers at the last stage, we got a chance to interview in-game leader rezex to see what the team is made of.

It turned out that the lineup never played very seriously together, only having FACEIT matchmaking experience behind them, which makes their ability to advance over fairly established teams like HellRaisers nearly miraculous.

After succeeding in the qualifiers the team was also invited for a D!ngIT Weekly Cup, where they reached a fair amount of success, as they defeated LDLC Blue twice and took ALTERNATE aTTaX to a resonably close three-map series.

The team still has zero LAN experience together, even individually, and seeing as they have three solid teams in their group, it seems more than unlikely that they would advance to playoffs.

E-frag.net

Emiliyan "⁠spyleadeR⁠" Dimitrov

Kamen "⁠bubble⁠" Kostadinov

Nikolay "⁠nkl⁠" Krastev

Viktor "⁠v1c7oR⁠" Dyankov

Nikolay "⁠pNshr⁠" Paunin

Seeing as this is a Valve-affiliated tournament, E-frag.net cannot use VAC-banned Simeon "⁠dream3r⁠" Ganev and will have to settle with pNshr heading into the tournament.

The Bulgarian side have played a reasonable amount of official matches with the stand-in and even managed to qualify for IEM Katowice a week ago, so the team should be used to the change by now, more or less.

pNshr will be standing in for dream3r this weekend 

Even with the stand-in, E-frag.net are heading into the PGL Minor Championship as one of the favourites—if not the biggest favourite of all. Still, they have somewhat tough competition ahead of them in the group, PENTA and LDLC White.

Seeing as the initial round is a best-of-one, it's possible that the team runs into communication or teamplay problems with the stand-in, which they won't be able to fix until they will have played a map or two, and fall to the elimination match right away. It's not likely to happen however, as they should be the best team in the group and advance from first place.

LDLC White

Matthieu "⁠matHEND⁠" Roquigny

Alexandre "⁠bodyy⁠" Pianaro

Simon "⁠Fuks⁠" Florysiak

Antoine "⁠to1nou⁠" Pirard

Timothée "⁠DEVIL⁠" Démolon

We haven't seen much of LDLC White in the past few months, at least not against top-tier competition, and they haven't been very successful even in the less-competitive environment.

The few solid results that they had were from Acer Predator Masters Season 2, where matHEND's squad tied best-of-two's against mousesports and SK. LDLC White also managed to pull out a whitewash performance on de_cache of their series versus Titan in the Red Dot Invitational. That is a good sign, because most of the teams are at least slightly below the level of the three mentioned, on paper. 

On the other hand though, their no-show against unu.AiN (CPH Wolves) in the DreamHack Leipzig qualifier was worrying (nine rounds on two maps combined), and in December they also couldn't overcome one of the teams they will meet this weekend in Bucharest, PENTA. Provided, that was PENTA with a different lineup, still featuring mousesports' Timo "⁠Spiidi⁠" Richter, and Hendrik "⁠strux1⁠" Goetzendorff, and it's been nearly two months since then.

PENTA

Kevin "⁠kRYSTAL⁠" Amend

Tahsin "⁠tahsiN⁠" Broschk

Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz

David "⁠Davidp⁠" Prins

Mike "⁠mikeS⁠" Tuns

It's hard to tell what kRYSTAL's team will be able to do in Bucharest this weekend, seeing as they have just changed two players after losing strux1, and Spiidi to mousesports.

Less than two weeks ago the team announced that Davidp, formerly of Deadpixels, and mikeS, who previously played for fm-eSports and Orbit, will be their new players after a short tryout period.

tabseN carried PENTA to the Minor

Since then they only played a few matches in that lineup, which is a poor sample size at best, although they did use this exact lineup to qualify for the event itself.

Overall they will likely have a tough time in Bucharest, and it will take a bit of adapting on-the-fly for them to at least advance to playoffs.

Lemondogs

Jerry "⁠xelos⁠" Råberg

Gustav "⁠KAB0M⁠" Runemalm

Adam "⁠maektig⁠" Widell

Mattias "⁠khobra⁠" Heidnert

Daniel "⁠t3h f4rm3r⁠" Börzsönyi

The team formerly known as AliGon was picked up by Lemondogs for the PGL Minor shortly after qualifying. khobra and xelos seem to be the main driving force behind the team whose name they represented together in the past.

AliGon qualified at the expense of ALTERNATE aTTaX, but apart from that triumph they haven't been too successful in the last two months. maektig's side has losses against Epiphany Bolt, BX3, and PiTER in their record, although they most recently took Vexed to two close maps in the Leipzig qualifier.

They haven't got past more than three rounds of the two IEM Katowice qualifiers either, the first of which they lost to an unknown "Team X", and the second to ex-Titan, understandably.

DenDD

André "⁠berg⁠" Kjellberg

Isak "⁠cype⁠" Rydman

Erik "⁠zende⁠" Sundeqvist Erik "⁠zende⁠" Sundeqvist

Miran "⁠dumz⁠" Matković

Benjamin "⁠BENDJI⁠" Söderena

Another mostly-Swedish squad rebranded from Blojexpressen back to DenDD recently, and they boast a lineup of quite known players from Sweden. Up until the qualifier they played with Robin "⁠robiin⁠" Sjögren and Simon "⁠twist⁠" Eliasson, but they qualified with the same lineup that you can see above.

The past two months have been rocky for the team. The previous lineup got very close to qualifying to Fragbite Masters Season 5 Finals at the expense of TSM and played a close affair with mousesports in APM Season 2.

After changing the duo, Blojexpressen qualified at the expense of Danny "⁠BERRY⁠" Krüger's M1X and RCTIC quite comfortably, but the tournament ahead will feature stronger teams than that.

PixelFire

Viktor "⁠flashie⁠" Tamás Bea

Bence "⁠DeadFox⁠" Böröcz

Lasse "⁠maeVe⁠" Elgaard

Benjamin "⁠tabu⁠" Vangstrup

André "⁠BARBARR⁠" Möller

PixelFire is another team who had to rebrand since qualifying, as they decided to leave CSGO.one after a scandalous request and found a new home in PixelFire shortly after.

Looking at recent results, it seems like PixelFire could have a big chance of making it out of groups, and even be in contention for the title. Late last year they defeated Rebels, FlipSid3 and PiTER in best-of-three series in the Uprise Champions Cup: Europe.

BARBARR returns to an international stage

In the PGL qualifier itself they were one of the few solid teams that got more than two chances at qualifying, as they participated in three qualifiers due to getting knocked out early in the first two. In the fourth, they advanced through teams such as gBots, Reason, and finally Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller's RUZKI.

In the first IEM Katowice qualifier they put on a very good showing that was worthy of an overtime against E-frag.net, the eventual winners. Judging by that, I would say they should advance to playoffs alongside HellRaisers and maybe even put up a fight with Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow's team.

HellRaisers

Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow

Emil "⁠kUcheR⁠" Akhundov

Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk

Patrik "⁠Zero⁠" Žúdel

Tomáš "⁠oskar⁠" Šťastný

And last but not least, HellRaisers. The end of 2015 was quite unsatisfying for oskar and company, who still played with Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg at the time, as they lost every series in the latter half of December, including one with Revival and one with Nostalgie.

When Zero got his chance in the team alongside former Fraternitas teammates oskar and STYKO, things didn't look too much better. A loss with an unknown CG team in the first qualifier was a worrying sign for HellRaisers' fans, although the team seem to have redeemed themselves since then.

A lot of pressure on oskar's shoulders to perform

They were quite close to qualifying to Leipzig, they even defeated E-frag.net along the way, but in the end fell to dignitas in a narrow fashion. In another qualifier, this time for IEM Katowice, oskar's side fell to eventual winners mousesports on a 14-16 de_cache.

HellRaisers are heading into the PGL Minor as one of the biggest favourites, arguably even the biggest of all teams, but they still have a lot to prove. This will be the team's LAN debut since the big change, and it will also be a chance for oskar to show whether he has what it takes to carry HellRaisers offline as much as he usually does online.

Who do you root for at the upcoming PGL Regional Minor Championship? Who do you have as the favourites to grab the spot at the offline MLG Columbus qualifier? Let us know your opinion in the comment section below.

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Viktor 'flashie' Tamás Bea Age: 20 Team: PixelFire Rating 1.0: 0.97 Maps played: 189 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.69 Andreas 'mOkEn' Karlsson Age: 20 Team: CG Rating 1.0: 0.92 Maps played: 11 KPR: 0.65 DPR: 0.69 Christian 'rezex' Bjerregaard Age: 20 Team: CG Rating 1.0: 0.97 Maps played: 31 KPR: 0.65 DPR: 0.66 Andreas 'znajder' Lindberg Age: 22 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 506 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.67 David 'Davidp' Prins Age: 21 Team: PENTA Rating 1.0: 1.14 Maps played: 36 KPR: 0.78 DPR: 0.66 Timo 'Spiidi' Richter Age: 20 Team: MOUZ Rating 1.0: 1.04 Maps played: 407 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.66 Bence 'DeadFox' Böröcz Age: 20 Team: PixelFire Rating 1.0: 1.12 Maps played: 132 KPR: 0.78 DPR: 0.68 Benjamin 'BENDJI' Söderena Age: 20 Team: DenDD Rating 1.0: 0.96 Maps played: 184 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.71 Gustav 'KAB0M' Runemalm Age: 22 Team: AliGon Rating 1.0: 1.01 Maps played: 132 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.69 Nikolay 'nkl' Krastev Age: 22 Team: E-frag.net Rating 1.0: 0.90 Maps played: 340 KPR: 0.60 DPR: 0.66 André 'berg' Kjellberg Age: 19 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.85 Maps played: 199 KPR: 0.59 DPR: 0.70 Kirill 'ANGE1' Karasiow Age: 26 Team: HellRaisers Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 794 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.70 Simon 'twist' Eliasson Age: 21 Team: Ancient Rating 1.0: 1.10 Maps played: 394 KPR: 0.77 DPR: 0.69 Robin 'robiin' Sjögren Age: 20 Team: DenDD Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 133 KPR: 0.75 DPR: 0.71 Isak 'cype' Rydman Age: 20 Team: DenDD Rating 1.0: 0.92 Maps played: 146 KPR: 0.63 DPR: 0.68 Lasse 'maeVe' Elgaard Age: 26 Team: PixelFire Rating 1.0: 1.00 Maps played: 149 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.66 Miran 'dumz' Matković Age: 20 Team: DenDD Rating 1.0: 0.91 Maps played: 150 KPR: 0.62 DPR: 0.70 Danny 'BERRY' Krüger Age: 25 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.90 Maps played: 255 KPR: 0.63 DPR: 0.72 Viktor 'v1c7oR' Dyankov Age: 21 Team: E-frag.net Rating 1.0: 1.11 Maps played: 353 KPR: 0.75 DPR: 0.65 Casper 'cadiaN' Møller Age: 20 Team: fan jävla Rating 1.0: 0.98 Maps played: 243 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.69 Simeon 'dream3r' Ganev Age: 18 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 1.15 Maps played: 325 KPR: 0.77 DPR: 0.61 Patrik 'Zero' Žúdel Age: 17 Team: HellRaisers Rating 1.0: 1.04 Maps played: 111 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.65 Tomáš 'oskar' Šťastný Age: 24 Team: HellRaisers Rating 1.0: 1.13 Maps played: 225 KPR: 0.79 DPR: 0.68 Benjamin 'tabu' Vangstrup Age: 21 Team: PixelFire Rating 1.0: 1.01 Maps played: 99 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.65 Johannes 'tabseN' Wodarz Age: 20 Team: PENTA Rating 1.0: 1.00 Maps played: 536 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.72 Jesse 'zehN' Linjala Age: 24 Team: CG Rating 1.0: 1.16 Maps played: 28 KPR: 0.76 DPR: 0.63 Daniel 't3h f4rm3r' Börzsönyi Age: 25 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.91 Maps played: 85 KPR: 0.65 DPR: 0.72 Tahsin 'tahsiN' Broschk Age: 25 Team: PENTA Rating 1.0: 0.99 Maps played: 217 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.71 Simon 'Fuks' Florysiak Age: 21 Team: LDLC White Rating 1.0: 0.88 Maps played: 113 KPR: 0.59 DPR: 0.67 William 'draken' Sundin Age: 20 Team: CG Rating 1.0: 0.96 Maps played: 30 KPR: 0.65 DPR: 0.70 Adam 'maektig' Widell Age: 23 Team: AliGon Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 45 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.68 André 'BARBARR' Möller Age: 25 Team: PixelFire Rating 1.0: 1.01 Maps played: 76 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.68 Emil 'kUcheR' Akhundov Age: 27 Team: HellRaisers Rating 1.0: 0.97 Maps played: 713 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.68 Hendrik 'strux1' Goetzendorff Age: 24 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.95 Maps played: 401 KPR: 0.65 DPR: 0.67 Antoine 'to1nou' Pirard Age: 20 Team: LDLC White Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 120 KPR: 0.74 DPR: 0.68 Kamen 'bubble' Kostadinov Age: 24 Team: E-frag.net Rating 1.0: 1.04 Maps played: 347 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.64 Emiliyan 'spyleadeR' Dimitrov Age: 26 Team: E-frag.net Rating 1.0: 1.07 Maps played: 357 KPR: 0.75 DPR: 0.69 Kevin 'kRYSTAL' Amend Age: 22 Team: PENTA Rating 1.0: 0.98 Maps played: 548 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.68 Matthieu 'matHEND' Roquigny Age: 21 Team: LDLC White Rating 1.0: 0.93 Maps played: 104 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.72 Erik 'zende' Sundeqvist Age: 21 Team: DenDD Rating 1.0: 0.96 Maps played: 232 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.68 Alexandre 'bodyy' Pianaro Age: 19 Team: LDLC White Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 111 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.68 Martin 'STYKO' Styk Age: 19 Team: HellRaisers Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 206 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.67 Mattias 'khobra' Heidnert Age: 24 Team: AliGon Rating 1.0: 1.00 Maps played: 67 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.69 Mike 'mikeS' Tuns Age: 23 Team: PENTA Rating 1.0: 0.97 Maps played: 60 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.68 Timothée 'DEVIL' Démolon Age: 21 Team: LDLC White Rating 1.0: 0.99 Maps played: 92 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.69 Jerry 'xelos' Råberg Age: 23 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 169 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.68 Nikolay 'pNshr' Paunin Age: 24 Team: E-frag.net Rating 1.0: 0.99 Maps played: 66 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.65 Fredrik 'REZ' Sterner Age: 18 Team: CG Rating 1.0: 1.14 Maps played: 19 KPR: 0.77 DPR: 0.63