Gamers8 2023 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Tournament Is Ready To Begin

Gamers8 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament will kick off on Wednesday, August 16 and conclude on Sunday, August 20, with the grand finals. The tournament will offer a $1 million prize pool – one of the largest prize pools for a non-Major championship – making it one of the most lucrative CS:GO tournaments of the year.

The whole event will take place at Boulevard Riyadh City in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – the same venue that will host the upcoming Rocket League event (August 24-27).

Gamers 8 will use a single-elimination bracket, with all matches played as best-of-three (Bo3).

The tournament organisers have already announced the list of participating teams. That includes some of the top-rated CS:GO squads in the world, including the current top-five-rated teams on the global CS:GO rankings – Heroic, Team Vitality, G2 Esports, ENCE, and FaZe.

Gamers8 is a fairly stacked event featuring all but two of the current top-10 ranked teams in the global CS:GO rankings. The only two squads missing are Astralis (no.6) and MOUZ (no.10).

Due to how stacked the tournament is, there is no clear favourite to win it all, yet a few teams stand out as a serious threat to go all the way. 

The current second-highest-rated squad Team Vitality are one of the leading candidates to win, which makes sense considering Vitality are the reigning Major champions, and they haven’t disappointed with their performances earlier this month.

With a semifinal appearance at Intel Extreme Masters Cologne 2023, Team Vitality made it clear that they’re just as good as they were ahead of the summer break. However, in Cologne, Vitality couldn’t make it past the surging ENCE, who join the list of potential Gamers8 champions.

ENCE have been quietly improving over the season and, in June, won their first tournament (IEM Dallas 2023). To that, ENCE added a silver medal from ESL Challengers Katowice 2023 and a grand finals appearance at IEM Cologne 2023, proving that they can compete at the highest level.

The IEM Cologne 2023 champions, G2 Esports, are not to be ignored either. Despite the team’s shaky showings after the summer break (7th-9th at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023), G2 Esports found traction in Cologne and made an impressive run to their first tournament title since February, showing the same form from early 2023 when G2 Esports seemed unstoppable.

Even though Vitality, ENCE, and G2 Esports lead the way as the teams to watch, the current no.1 CS:GO team in the world Heroic shouldn’t be overlooked. Heroic have been one of the most consistent teams of the year, finishing every tournament they’ve attended in 2023 inside the top four except for ESL Pro League Season 17 (5th-8th) and IEM Cologne 2023 (5th-6th).

Whether we'll see one of the favourites take the spoils in Saudi Arabia or one of the outsiders, cause an upset remains to be seen. But we don't have to wait for long to see how the battle for the lion's share of the $1 million will end up, as only a couple of days separate us from the tournament kick-off.