It has been an exciting return to the Pro League this week, with all four regions having played their first games after the mid-season break. During the break at the Six Major Paris and DreamHack Montreal, we saw some amazing gameplay, and it was very interesting to see how the top-level competition continued during the Pro League season, especially with the release of the new Operation Grim Sky.
North America (NA):
As always, the first games of the week played out in North America. DreamHack Canada champions Cloud9 fell to mousesports 6 rounds to 3, while table-leaders SK Gaming could only draw with Paris Major semi-finalists Obey Alliance. Evil Geniuses (EG), on the other hand seemed to have begun working better with Geoometrics, who helped EG defeat his former team Rogue 6-3. This was a surprising defeat after Rogue’s new lineup with Supr and Shuttle beat them 2-0 in the DreamHack Montreal quarterfinals. Finally, Spacestation Gaming (SSG) took down Noble Esports with a comfortable 6-2 scoreline.
These results see both SSG and EG climb the table to tie at 14 points, but with SSG ahead in 2nd place due to a 1-round superior round difference. SK Gaming holds station in 1st, but Rogue drops to 4th, while mousesports leapfrogged Noble and Cloud9 to go 5th.
In Week 9, both EG and SSG will go head-to-head to see who will take the lead over the other, while relegation candidates Obey and Cloud9 take each other on in two must-watch games.
Latin America (LATAM):
Over in LATAM, parallelism was the name of the game, with all four of the week’s matches ending with a 6-1 scoreline. The night started off with the old Black Dragons (BD) roster, now Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP), continuing their Pro League struggle as they crashed to yet another defeat -- this time against the current Black Dragons squad. Next, paiN Gaming put on a great show to take down Team oNe despite bringing ninexT back from retirement as a replacement for YooNah. The ex-paiN player fit in well as a replacement for gohaN on FaZe Clan, as his team toppled table-leaders Immortals. The final game of the day, between BootKamp Gaming (BKG) and Team Liquid was postponed a day due to BKG being unable to return from DreamHack Canada in time, but BKG had no issues in defeating the Season 7 Pro League champions.
These results have FaZe climbing to 1st-place over Team Liquid and Immortals, while Black Dragons got a step closer to avoiding the auto-relegation spot after their win against NiP put them in 7th over the latter who dropped to 8th. The 4th, 5th, and 6th-placed teams of Team oNe, BKG, and paiN, however, had no change in position.
Subsequently, be sure to catch BD trying to pull paiN down into the relegation slot as they go up against each other next week, and Liquid and Immortals attempting to break their own deadlock in the top-half of the table.
Europe (EU):
Finally, the Week 8 EU games concluded with two draws. After a frenetic post-Paris player and organisation shuffle, we saw the new Mock-it (previously OrgLess) share the spoils with Chaos in a tie. The two European DreamHack champions -- Team Secret and Millenium -- also were evenly matched. The previously all-French squad of Millenium had made one change, with German star AceeZ replacing Joghurtzz. The only two victories of the night came from the current and previous PENTA Sports squads, with the organisation making a return to competitive Rainbow Six after signing the former Mock-it roster. Bottom-placed Supremacy fell 6-3 to PENTA, who have replaced Voy and Alive with SirBoss and ex-OrgLess player Hungry, and G2 Esports swiftly defeated Team Vitality 6 rounds to 2.
The night resulted in PENTA Sports moving up two places to 3rd, pushing Millenium and Mock-it down into 4th and 5th place respectively. Other than these changes, the EU standings remained unperturbed, with G2 already having a commanding 7-point lead over second place Team Secret.
Next week, Millenium will take on G2, and 7th-placed Chaos will attempt to trade places with 6th-placed Vitality to climb out of the relegation zone -- you won’t want to miss these two matches!
Don’t miss all the exciting games next week on our official Twitch channel, and be sure to share your predictions with us on Twitter!
