CSGO team wins $1k ‘kassad Grand Slam’ after stunning Evil Geniuses in RMR qualifier
ESL/Helena KristianssonThe North American RMR closed qualifier has concluded, with LOS + oNe claiming the $1,000 bounty placed on Evil Geniuses by analyst Aleksandar ‘kassad’ Trifunović after denying the North American team a spot at the Major qualifier.
kassad has been openly critical of Evil Geniuses and the esports organization’s CS:GO project. EG signed two rosters, in addition to its main team, in June 2022 and said that it would be running a 15-man roster with three teams to nurture North American talent.
So far, that experiment has yet to bring results on the big stage. However, Evil Geniuses has promoted two players to its main CS:GO roster since the project began, with Jerric ‘wiz’ Jiang and Jadan ‘HexT’ Postma making it to the top.
kassad adds some spice to Evil Geniuses NA RMR qualifier run
Evil Geniuses got their qualifying campaign off on the wrong foot, losing to yur, an unsigned roster ranked 204th in the world, in an overtime game. kassad then took to Twitter to pledge $1,000 to the team that eliminated EG from the qualifier.
As the final day of the qualifier kicked off, EG only had to beat MIBR to secure a spot in the RMR. But a 0-2 loss to the Brazilian team meant that they had to play two more matches to have a chance to qualify for the LAN tournament.
EG quickly dispatched Mythic, a streamer team featuring Erik ‘fl0m’ Flom, only to fall short against LOS + oNe in the decisive 7th-place match after two close maps.
On Twitter, LOS + oNe partner and advisor Alexandre ‘kakaveL’ Peres said that he “will take the boys skiing” with the money sent by kassad.
The failure to reach the Americas RMR means that Evil Geniuses will miss the BLAST.tv Paris Major. Head coach Daniel ‘vorborg’ Vorborg described this as the “lowest point in my career” and apologized to the team’s fans.
EG’s next match will be in the group stage of the upcoming ESL Pro League Season 17 against Cloud9, on February 22.