CS:GO World Rankings January 2019

After a quiet December due to winter break, in this January, the world CS: GO has become more exciting with many tournaments and the rankings have also had many changes.

Counter-Strike is back in full swing in January. In the past month, we’ve seen four regional qualifiers for the IEM Katowice Major: Europe, CIS, Americas and Asia. At the same time, two other events are also taking place in the US: iBUYPOWER Masters and ELEAGUE Invitational.

Regional Minors, plus play-ins, determine the last 10 teams to qualify for the New Challengers round of the Katowice Major. In Los Angeles, we watched Liquid beat Astralis in the BO3 final of the iBUYPOWER Masters, taking home their first $100,000 prize money of the year. Not only was it the key event of the month, it was also the first time in Liquid history that Liquid had beaten Astralis in a series of encounters.

In the latest tournament, taking place in eastern Georgia, we saw FaZe lift its first championship trophy of the year, beating Cloud9 2-1 in the final. With new member Dauren “adreN” Kystaubayev, FaZe walked away with $80,000 in prize money and confidence ahead of the Major.

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 January 2019the “+/-” signs represent the promotion and relegation of the teams, and the difference is when compared with the December 2018 rankings, not the weekly team rankings.

With many tournaments taking place in January, the rankings have many changes, mainly coming from successful teams in LAN tournaments. Here are the 5 key takeaways from the January rankings change:

Liquid consolidates 2nd place in the world

Team Liquid exploded in 2019 with a victory at iBUYPOWER Masters, defeating strong rival Astralis in the BO3 final. This was the North American team’s first LAN win against Astralis in three months, boosting the team’s morale ahead of the Major.

In addition to strengthening morale, the victory in Los Angeles helped the team regain the 2nd place in the world, knocking the CIS representative Natus Vincere down to 3rd place. All of Liquid’s scores increased: an increase of 88.5 points compared to the table. December ratings.

Liquid is now in the midst of preparing for the IEM Katowice Major and we could see the team close the gap from the world No. 1, Astralis.

FaZe jumps into the top 5

The international squad continues to be promoted after the roster change with the new name AdreN on the list. Contrary to recent results, the team had a poor performance at iBUYPOWERS Masters – the tournament where FaZe lost 1-2 in the group stage to the home team Ghost.

Team Europe redeemed themselves shortly after, with an impressive performance at the ELEAGUE Invitational. FaZe defeated Cloud9 in the final to win the first 2019 trophy, as well as increase the ranking of the team.

Like the other Major teams, FaZe will focus on preparing for one of the most important events of the year. Making sure AdreN fits into the system will be the focus of this Major if FaZe really wants to reclaim the Legend title.

Cloud9 is back in the top 10

Despite the promotion from #14 to #8, Cloud9’s January had mixed results. At iBUYPOWER Masters, they did not achieve anything outstanding. Cloud9 soon left right from the group stage when they lost to Astralis and then fnatic.

However, like FaZe, Cloud9 returned to form at the ELEAGUE Invitational. The team reached the final before succumbing to FaZe. This is also the first time the team has made it to a final since cs_summit 2.

Cloud9 is getting ready to take part in the New Challengers round at the IEM Katowice Major with ambitions to make it to the top 8 at New Legends.

mousesports was relegated to 9th place

The once-powerful mousesports dropped dramatically when the team failed to qualify for the IEM Katowice Major after a poor performance at the Europe Minor. The team fell in the group stage after Valiance unexpectedly beat them in the opening and deciding match of Group A.

After the catastrophic failure at the Minor, the two members are Chris “ChrisJ” de Jong and Martin “STYKO” Styko had to leave the team, leaving mouz with only three members: Tomáš “oskar” astny, Miikka “suNny” Kemppi and Robin “ropz” Kool.

For the time being, mousesports will focus on rebuilding, looking for a stable lineup with two new members, including IGL. The team’s next LAN event will be the StarSeries i-League Season 7 finals, taking place in Shanghai (China) from March 30 to April 7. Mousesports has plenty of time to prepare for the new roster.

fnatic returns to number 5

January marked a resurgence for fnatic, returning to the top 5 for the first time since May 2018. A good performance at the iBUYPOWER Masters sent the Swedish team into the playoffs before being sent off by champions Liquid in the semifinals.

The promotion shows that the squad has improved. Fnatic has climbed 17 places since settling in with Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin over three months.

After making it to the top 11 at the FACEIT Major, fnatic is now looking forward to the New Challengers round at IEM Katowice. With the new Swedish roster, fans are expecting them to continue to shine at this CS:GO Major.

Spirit, FURIA on the rise after Minor

Spirit’s Russia squad has also achieved the highest ranking since the slump, beating many opponents over the past month. From #37 to #20, the performance at the CIS Minor is proof that Spirit has grown. Beating co-regional representatives Gambit and Winstrike on the run, Spirit showed they couldn’t be underestimated and took a direct spot to the next Major.

Finishing last at the previous Minor, FURIA came out better this time and rose to second place in Katowice, qualifying for the Major with a convincing victory over EnVy. The Brazilian team is up 28 places since the beginning of the year and will attend the Major confidently with two stars in top form, Yuri “yuurih” Santos and Kaike “kscerato” Cerato.

After the Minor ended, both teams entered the WePlay online tournament! Lock and Load. These two opponents were evenly matched, pushing the game to overtime and leaving together in the quarterfinals.

According to HLTV