Gamers8 participants and favorites

Gamers8 2023 will be one of the biggest CS:GO events of this year. The tournament offers $1 million in prize money and features 16 of the world’s best teams. Because of this, it’s hard to regard it as just another S-tier competition.

Even though it doesn’t have the prestige of a Major and only lasts for one week, Gamers8 will offer viewers the same level of Counter-Strike that they’ve come to expect from the game’s finest teams and tournaments.

Gamers8 details

Gamers8 will take place between August 14-20 in Riyadh. Last year, Saudi Arabia decided to make a big investment in esports and bought ESL. So now they’re trying their best to make their presence felt by organizing CS:GO and Dota 2 tournaments. And lots of other esports events.

All of them have two characteristics: they feature the best teams in the world and offer large prize pools. This is certainly good for the players, especially in games like Dota 2.

The competitive format of Gamers8 is yet to be revealed but we can suspect that it will be something standard: two groups of eight teams followed by a six-team playoffs stage.

Gamers8 participants

 

Please welcome @GamerLegion and @apeksgg, as they join the #Gamers8 CS:GO lineup!

They shocked the world at the Last CS:GO Major. Let’s see what they bring to the table in Riyadh 🤩 pic.twitter.com/EfZgJzlCAp

— Gamers8 Esports (@Gamers8GG) June 5, 2023

At the moment, 15 of the 16 participants are known. Here’s a list of them:

• Apeks
• Cloud9
• ENCE
• FaZe Clan
• G2 Esports
• Team Falcons
• FURIA Esports
• GamerLegion
• Heroic
• Team Liquid
• Natus Vincere
• Virtus.pro
• Team Vitality
• Fnatic
• MIBR

Given the fact that all of the world’s top 10 teams will compete in the tournament, the event feels a lot like a Major.

Gamers8 Favorites

At this point it’s still too soon to talk about favorites because there are more than two months left until the start of the tournament. In addition to this, by the time the event begins, Source 2 might already be the official version of Counter-Strike being played in esports competitions.

That version of CS will likely have a slightly different pecking order. Players like Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, who have already experimented with CS2, will undoubtedly have an edge.

But if nothing changes, one of the current favorites is likely to be the winner of Gamers8. The best teams that come to mind are Heroic, Vitality, Natus Vincere, and FaZe Clan. At the moment, it is hard to believe that Apeks, GamerLegion, and ENCE will be able to repeat their performance from the tournaments they played in the last three months.

Header: ESL