The Update: May 20

By: Zachary Lange 

Here is The Update for May 20:

Counter Strike with a huge week ahead in EPL and ECS play

A gauntlet stands in the way of eUnited booking their ticket for the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals in Montpellier, France.

Beginning Tuesday, the squad will play in a last chance qualifier against Cloud 9, Ghost and Infinity Esports in a round-robin format. The team with the best record will qualify for the $750,000 finals in June, with head-to-head records serving as the primary tiebreaker should two teams have the same record.

For this event, Ian “motm” Hardy will serve as a stand-in for Kaleb “moose” Jayne due to visa issues. Most recently, motm was a player for Singularity.

During the opening group stage last month, eUnited just barely missed out on first place after a three-way tie with NRG and Renegades pegged the squad as the runner-up in Group A.

Also this week, eUnited will participate in another week of play in Season 7 of the ECS. Coincidentally, the squad is set to face off against Cloud 9 on Tuesday – the same day as their EPL match. The hope for both squads is to play both matches, with ECS scheduled for 6 p.m. Eastern and EPL at 8:20 p.m. Eastern.

Samsora places top-6 at GOML 2019

It was relatively smooth sailing early on for Ezra “Samsora” Morris at Get On My Level 2019, but two straight losses in the top-8 bracket sent the Peach main packing with a top-6 placement.

Play began Saturday with Samsora collecting seven straight match victories through preliminary bracket play, claiming a spot in the winners bracket of the top-8 participants with a 3-2 victory against Dabuz.

From there, a 3-0 defeat against eventual tournament winner Tweek would send Samsora to the losers bracket, where he lost a tightly contested set to MKLeo by a final of 3-1.

A total of 847 competitors participated in the singles tournament for Smash: Ultimate at GOML 2019. The event was held in Toronto, Ontario.

On Thursday, Samsora will travel to Atlanta for MomoCon 2019 to compete for a $10,000 prize pool in the singles event.

PUBG struggles in Week 3 of NPL Phase 2

After a strong start to NPL Phase 2, a host of issues have moved the team down to ninth in the standings, respectively.

eUnited began Week 3 with a strong second place finish, but failed to reach the top-3 in the remaining seven matches. Deaths due to coming out on the losing end of team fights in the early game hindered the team’s ability to place highly in many of the matches.

Still, the squad is safe from facing relegation in the NPL. With 140 points, the team is only 22 points behind fourth place cut-off for the global event hosted by the Global Loot League in June.

Next week, the team will enjoy a midseason break with the NPL Royale, a two day, non-points paying tournament which combines all 32 teams that compete in the NPL and NPL Contenders leagues.