Perfect World, the Chinese Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament organisers, have secured the rights to host Valve’s Regional Major Rankings (RMR) in Oceania with the region’s big four teams revealed to battle four teams from open qualifiers.
With $50,000 USD of prizes and more than 2000 RMR tournament points on the line, the spot at the Rio Major could go to any team in the competition.
Order star AWPer Alistair “Alistair” Johnston has picked the contest to be an “all-out brawl” and he has table-toppers Renegades in his crosshair.
“This is a real good chance for us to take it from [Renegades], and it’s really gonna come down to how well we prepare ourselves and stay on top of our mental game, which I think we excel at,” Johnston told Snowball Esports.
OCE’s top four CS:GO teams; Renegades, Order, Ground Zero and Chiefs have secured invitations to the competition with four more places to be filled through open qualifiers beginning August 28.
We will host the PAL (a.k.a. Perfect World Asia League) and POL (a.k.a. Perfect World Oceania League) from August 28th to October 11th, which will be part of the fall RMR events for 2020. Let’s witness the Asia and Oceania championship altogether.#PAL2020 #POL2020 #CSGO pic.twitter.com/9hYfhbw3Tu
— CSGO_PerfectWorld (@CPerfectworld) August 5, 2020
Renegades reign at the top of the table with 1600 RMR points tailed closely by Order with 1500.
But the huge 2500 RMR point prize for the winner could see even Chiefs ESC, who sit at 0 points following roster change penalties, theoretically taking the crown.
The winning team will also pocket $12,500.
Prize table:
- 1. $12,500 + 2500 RMR Points
- 2. $10,000 + 2344 RMR Points
- 3. $7,500 + 2188 RMR Points
- 4. $6,000 + 2031 RMR Points
- 5-6. $4,500
- 7-8. $2,500
The tournament will be a double-elimination format with play-offs starting September 2.
Perfect World has a long history of organising esport events for their domestic audience and will run the Perfect World Asia League (PAL) at the same time.
Alistair said the Chinese publisher running the event was a “breath of fresh air” and was hopeful for a smooth tournament.
Perfect World hasn’t made an official statement about whether the tournament will have a LAN component, but due to ongoing pandemic restrictions in Melbourne, it’s assumed the series will be online-only.
“Obviously all the top teams would prefer LAN but that’s just a dream for now and I don’t really think that should make any difference to our results for qualifiers unless there are proper internet issues”
Alistair “Alistair” Johnson
The global pandemic has put a cloud over the ESL One: Rio 2020 major with fears the event will be canned.
The first major for 2020, Rio was scheduled for May but the event was postponed until November, the Autumn major date, ballooning the prize pool to $2million USD.
Alistair said regardless, they’re going for the win.
“I think at this level you have to learn to ignore things out of your control and that’s what we’ve done,” he said.
“Regardless if this tournament actually goes through, we’re going for the win no matter what.”
Perfect World was approached for comment but hadn’t responded by publication.
