Evil Geniuses are your StarSeries and I-League Season 8 Champions!
StarSeries & i-League Season 8 brings together 16 leading CS:GO teams to contest a $500,000 prize pool in Belek, Turkey. The schedule, group standings and playoff bracket will be updated here throughout the tournament.
All StarSeries Season 8 live streams can be found on the Luckbox CS:GO matches page. Make your predictions and play for real cash by creating your Luckbox account now.
What is the schedule for StarSeries & i-League Season 8?
StarSeries & i-League Season 8 starts on Monday, October 21st, and runs until Sunday, October 27th. All matches are best-of-three, including the final.
Group stage matches are double-elimination GSL format, with the top four from each group heading through to the playoff bracket, which is also double-elimination.
The detailed schedule, including match start times, will be published when the groups are confirmed.
Playoff bracket
The StarSeries & i-League bracket for the playoff stage.
Day 1, Oct 25
Semifinals (BO3)
- 4pm CEST - G2 Esports 1-2 FNATIC
- 7:30pm CEST - Renegades 0-2 Evil Geniuses
Losers' Round 1
- 9am CEST - Team Vitality 0-2 Furia Esports
- 12:30pm CEST - Ninjas in Pyjamas 1-2 MiBR
Day 2, Oct 26
Losers' Round 2
- 9am CEST - G2 Esports 0-2 Furia Esports
- 1:30pm CEST - Renegades vs MiBR
Winners' Finals
- 4pm CEST - FNATIC vs Evil Geniuses
Losers' Round 3
- 7:30pm - Furia Esports 2-0 Renegades
Day 3, Oct 27
Losers' Finals
- 1pm - FNATIC 2-1 Furia Esports
Grand Finals
- 4:30pm - Evil Geniuses 2-0 FNATIC
Group stage results
Group A standings
The StarSeries & i-League Season 8 standings in Group A, updated throughout the tournament.
Group B standings
Check the StarSeries & i-League Season 8 standings in Group B, updated throughout the tournament.
Day 1, October 21
Group A Quarterfinals
- 9am CEST - Team Vitality 2-0 Invictus Gaming
- 9am CEST - mousesports 1-2 North
- 12:30pm CEST - FNATIC 2-0 The Imperial
- 12:30pm CEST - Renegades 2-1 MiBR
Group A Semifinals
- 4pm CEST - Team Vitality 2-1 North
- 7:30pm CEST - FNATIC 0-2 Renegades
Day 2, October 22
Group B Quarterfinals
- 9am CEST - Evil Geniuses 2-0 5Power eSports
- 9am CEST - Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-0 Furia Esports
- 12:30pm CEST - Heroic 0-2 AVANGAR
- 12:30pm CEST - Natus Vincere 1-2 G2 Esports
Group B Semifinals
- 4pm CEST - Evil Geniuses 1-2 Ninjas in Pyjamas
- 7:30pm CEST - AVANGAR 0-2 G2 Esports
Day 3, October 23
Group A Losers' Rounds
- 9am - The Imperial 0-2 MiBR
- 9am - Invictus Gaming 0-2 mousesports
- 4pm - North 0-2 MiBR
- 4pm - FNATIC 2-0 mousesports
Group B Losers' Rounds
- 12:30pm - 5Power eSports 0-2 Furia Esports
- 12:30pm - Heroic 2-0 Natus Vincere
- 7:30pm - AVANGAR 1-2 Furia Esports
- 7:30pm - Evil Geniuses 2-1 Heroic
Day 4, October 24
Group A winners's final
- 9am - Renegades 2-0 Team Vitality
Group A losers's final
- 9am - MiBR 0-2 FNATIC
Group B winner's final
- 2:30pm - Ninjas in Pyjamas 0-2 G2 Esports
Group B losers's final
- 2:30pm - Furia Esports 0-2 Evil Geniuses
Which teams are there?
The 16 CS:GO teams at StarSeries & i-League Season eight are:
- AVANGAR
- Evil Geniuses
- Fnatic
- FURIA
- G2
- MIBR
- mousesports
- Na'Vi
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- North
- Renegades
- Vitality
- Heroic
- 5Power Gaming
- Invictus
- Imperial
Who are favourites to win?
CS:GO writer Tim Masters takes a look at the teams in contention at StarSeries & i-League Season 8.
The post Major months are supposed to be a wind-down to the end of the year, but things have turned out rather differently and Berlin kicked the market into overdrive, with massive moves happening left and right.
Early signs suggest the likes of Vitality and Na’Vi were the biggest beneficiaries of their respective decisions and both are on show, among the favourites even, at StarLadder & i-League Season 8 finals from Belek, Turkey.
Big dogs in town
Last year, the absence of Team Liquid and Astralis from any event was enough to make you seriously question whether or not you were going to watch, but in the post-Major months we couldn’t care less about the top-ranked sides, as there are movers in the pack.
Major finalists AVANGAR are here, and will want to quell some of the questioning talk about their ability to stay in the top five, and they have some serious opposition in the form of NA’s finest and some European deities.
We’re going to start with the Americans, as they are first alphabetically, and this is where you can expect to see the best of Evil Geniuses after they fell foul to DreamHack Malmo’s terrible scheduling, unable to produce their best having flown out just a few hours after their New York win.
Here in Turkey, where Tarik’s family hail from, you can expect them to be in better form, and among the favourites.
In their way should be the aforementioned Europeans, and the triumvirate of EG, Na’Vi and Vitality is what makes this event so mouth-watering.
The talent on the NA team is absurd, and they have nobody capable of matching the level s1mple of ZywOo are capable of, which is just crazy when you think of where CSGO was just a couple of years ago, still recycling old names based on what they could do with the game was essentially amateur.
The French team look super spicy too now shox is in the mix, and with any luck he’ll realise he’s onto a good thing rather than ruining the fun like he did for G2. The signs are that his partnership with ZywOo is the most exciting thing to come out of France since, well, his partnership with kennyS, but it looks at though Vitality will need a bit of time to work out how everyone fits into the new reality.
If we had to pick from the three, then we’d go with Na’Vi, as Luckbox believe in love and their story is too great to ignore.
The reunited s1mple and GuardiaN, who now know what they were missing in the Na’Vi/Zeus years, is beautiful enough, and with the team also freed from the tyrannical reign and dodgy neck tattoos of the aforementioned IGL (and his sycophantic coach) things just look rosy for CIS’s finest.
AVANGAR assemble!
If I were Jame, fresh off months of people memeing on him for always saving, and I’d then led my team to the final of the Berlin Major, I’d be expecting a bit of respect, so it must sting the Avangar boys to be written off over and over even before they’ve had a chance to prove they belong in the top five of world CS. Having said that, we do have them in this group, rather than the big three, so we aren’t pointing the finger as much as telling it like it is.
Fnatic obviously come in off a win, but their victory in Malmo has more asterisks than a René Goscinny book. Not only were the big teams all zombified from a lack of sleep, but DreamHack’s coaching rule means you really can’t hold the event up next to the majority of the calendar and say it is equally difficult to win. It might be hard in a different way, but the anomalous ruling on coach communication means Fnatic have to prove themselves all over again.
We also have the likes of G2, Mousesports and Renegades to enjoy, and they are all teams with the talent to cause an upset. The absolute potential of the French/international mix assembled under the G2 banner isn’t known yet, but they and Mousesports have all the tools to go deep, as we suspect Renegades do if they can get their prep right.
Sadly, there look to be some fillers in with the killers too, although we don’t want to say that a small, tier-two team such as 5Power, Imperial or MIBR have no hope in any game. It’s just that winning these events gets harder every year, and the gap between the world’s best and the rest is pretty huge when everyone gets to sleep on time, isn’t destroyed by jetlag, and plays under the rules they are used to.
Pictures: StarLadder / Flickr
