CS:GO World Rankings for March 2019

After the Major fever cooled down, Counter-Strike fans didn’t have to wait long to watch the next big event. São Paulo hosted the first BLAST Pro Series event in South America – the tournament in which Major champion Astralis defeated Liquid in the final, becoming the first team to win two consecutive championships in competition history.

This is the only major event in the month of March, but we also have another pretty exciting major tournament in the month. The Chinese city of Chongqing hosts the WESG 2017 Finals, with Windigo writing a fairy tale: winning a $500,000 prize money against an unexpected opponent, AGO.

The Bulgari boys were unable to replicate that success at the United Masters League Season 1 Finals, another mid-range LAN tournament taking place in March. In Osnabrück, Germany, Windigo sadly finished second when losing to Valience in tournament 4. team, with $100,000 in prize money.

Scoring mechanism

Here are tTo summarize the factors that affect the scores of the teams on the leaderboard each month:

The leaderboard has a base score of teams based on their performance in the previous year (achievement points). Then there is the “Form” score, which is calculated based on the individual achievements of the Players in the team and the results of online tournaments in the last 2 months. Finally, the LANs point, this point is calculated based on the performance in offline tournaments within the last 3 months.

Also, if a team wants to keep their base score before the new month’s score is calculated, their lineup must hold at least 3 Players from the previous month. And as mentioned above, the results of the online competition only slightly affect the scores in the “Form” section and it is mainly counted for the purpose of ranking some new teams on the rankings (this is possible. Understandably, because LANs scores affect a lot, teams that don’t have a place to compete offline but want to go up the rankings have to work hard at online tournaments).

Charts

Here is the standings of the teams for the month March 2019the “+/-” signs represent the promotion and relegation of the teams, and the difference is when compared with the February 2019 rankings, not the weekly team rankings.

Here are five takeaways from the March rankings:

ENCE stabilizes position

After a magical journey at the IEM Katowice Major, ENCE played firmly at the BLAST Pro Series São Paulo. They won 3rd place, beat MIBR, NiP, FaZe and missed out on the final due to a score difference.

Going online, the team finished ESEA MDL in 9th place with poor results – a signal that the team prioritized its LAN tournaments.

The Finnish team is no longer considered the bottom door against “veteran” opponents. They played stably and endured psychological pressure against the strongest teams. With recent uptrend performances, ENCE will surely become one of CSGO’s formidable forces.

After the StarSeries i-League Season 7 tournament, ENCE will enjoy a few weeks of LAN-free vacation upon returning from Shanghai.

A fresh start for mousesports and Cloud9

Cloud9 dropped to 138th place after losing key members they attended in recent events. The only score that Cloud9 has come from the last four LAN events they attended with Golden – BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen took place 6 months ago.

As for mousesports, they completely disappeared from the rankings when they replaced three old members with Finn “karrigan” Andersen, zgür “woxic” Eker and David “frozen” Čerňansky. With these changes, the team has earned themselves a decent score and is ranked 46th in the world rankings, only 30 points away from entering the top 30.

The champion of ELEAGUE Major Boston is in a state of mystery, as they have not yet announced the official 5th member. Fortunately, Cloud9 will have plenty of opportunities to backfire: just this month, the team will attend ESL Pro League Season 9 Americas and BLAST Pro Series Miami, as well as present for a third consecutive ECS season. mousesports also has a busy month ahead with its debut on April 12 at ESL Pro League Europe before flying to Sydney at the end of the month on its IEM journey.

MIBR drops to 8th place

March has been too difficult for MIBR, who have not been able to fix the problems that have arisen in the last two post-Major tournaments, the WEST Finals and BLAST Pro Series São Paulo. This nightmare continued to be confirmed in Shanghai when leaving with a 1-3 record, losing 0-2 to North.

WESG’s memory of last year’s defeat resurfaced this March when the Brazilian boys, seen as title contenders, were knocked out again by Windigo and forced to finish in the top eight with a $10,000 prize. Despite playing at home at BLAST Pro Series, MIBR completely broke down, leaving at the bottom of the table with a score of 0-5. The failure disillusioned their Brazilian fans.

The lingering difficulties suggest a deeper problem is going on internally: harmony is not the key here since the members have played together too much. Many question whether this Brazilian team can return to the legendary title as before. And it seems, this question will not have an optimistic answer when MIBR is gradually leaving the top 10.

Windigo hits new heights

It’s been a great month for Windigo. Team Bulgaria failed to qualify for the playoffs of Europe Minor, their first LAN tournament of 2019, after losing to ENCE and North, but unexpectedly wrote a fairy tale at the WESG Finals. Windigo won and took home $500,000.

In Chongqing, Windigo survived the death group with fnatic and Movistar Raiders before defeating Furious, MIBR, G2 and AGO in the playoffs. Valentin “poizon” Vasilev and tournament MVP Georgi “SHiPZ” Grigorov both played a key role in the team’s success.

This is not Windigo’s only achievement in March. The team also qualified for DreamHack Masters Dallas after winning BIG, G2 and AVANGAR, and then runner-up United Master League Finals, in the dramatic series with Valiance.

Just two months after criticizing, Windigo is now living the dream. They are currently 15th – their highest position ever – and will continue to find new success for themselves in the ESL Pro League, where Natus Vincere, fnatic and G2 await.

AGO is back in the top 20

9 months later, AGO also returned to the top 20. After losing Michał “snatchie” Rudzki was in the hands of Virtus.pro, the Polish team could not find themselves for a few months outside the top 30, sometimes falling to 47th place in early February.

No one thought they could expect anything from AGO at the WESG finals, the team’s first LAN tournament of the year, but the boys performed really well. Behind MIBRT in the 2-team group stage, the Polish team defeated the talented Ukraine and Valiance, before shocking fnatic (especially on Inferno map, they won 16-0) to win the ticket to the final.

In the end, the Windigo challenge was really too hard for AGO, but the team was still alive and well after the event. AGO will enter DreamHack Open Rio as one of the contenders and will no doubt aim for the top spot at the tournament after failing in the semi-finals in the previous 4th appearance of this tournament.

According to HLTV