ESL Impact Valencia begins

As usual, the annual DreamHack festival in Valencia offers a lot of esports and gaming action and this year is not an exception. Besides the ESL Challenger CS:GO tournament and competitions in StarCraft 2 and Halo, the event also hosts the first edition of the ESL Impact female CS:GO tournament in Valencia.  

The ESL Impact Valencia 2022 runs between July 1-3 and features eight female CS:GO teams in a battle for a shared prize pool of $100,000. This marks the second big event in ESL’s female CS:GO League which debuted earlier this year. 

Format and schedule 

The LAN tournament starts with a double-elimination format GSL group stage featuring two groups of four teams. While opening and winners’ matches are best-of-one, elimination and decider matches are best-of-three series. The top two teams from each group then advance to the single-elimination playoff, where all matches are best-of-three series. 

The tournament’s opening match between Nigma Galaxy Fe and Mindfreak has already concluded with a 16-6 win for the reigning ESL Impact champions Nigma Galaxy. The rest of the opening day will see clashes of NAVI Javelins vs. BIG EQUIPA, FURIA Female vs. MIBR Female and GODSENT Female vs. CLG Red. 

The playoff matches will kick off on Sunday, July 3 at 11 am and 2:30 pm CEST, while the Grand Final is scheduled for 6 pm CEST. 

Teams 

Half of the eight teams participating in the ESL Impact Valencia 2022 have been invited by organizers, more specifically the first four finishers in the Impact League Season 1 — Nigma Galaxy Fe, FURIA Female, CLG Red and BIG EQUIPA. The rest had to secure their spot in the competition via regional qualifiers. 

Group A — Nigma Galaxy Fe, BIG EQUIPA, NAVI Javelins, Mindfreak 

The obvious favourite of Group A and also of the whole tournament are definitely Nigma Galaxy, the winners of the Impact League season-concluding event in Dallas. Nigma’s star players Ksenia “⁠vilga⁠” Kluenkova and Ana “⁠ANa⁠” Dumbravă, whose rating over 8 maps in Dallas was 1.24 and 1.36, will be undoubtedly eager to continue the team’s current win streak of 15 matches.  

Group B — FURIA Female, MIBR Female, GODSENT Female, CLG Red

The other team that could possibly make victory claims are FURIA fe — the second place from Dallas. However, it’s questionable whether the Brazillian team would be able to endanger Nigma as in Dallas, they lost both times they faced the CIS team. What is very likely though is that the two teams will meet again in this event’s Grand Final.

Header: ESL