Cash Cup sign-ups improve Katowice chances

Evil Geniuses and paiN just had their hopes of making it to Katowice slightly improved this morning after it was discovered that more of NA’s top teams had signed up for this weekend’s Cash Cup.

According to the event page, Strife, Iron Blood, oNe, and Nouns are all signed up, improving the quality of the event from “M” to “L”, which provides a greater distribution of points to its top finishers.

This increased distribution means that Evil Geniuses only need to reach 8th place in this weekend’s tournament, while paiN will only have to make it to 3rd place.

Looking back at Dust2.us' calculations, which takes rank decay into consideration, this should be the ranking disregarding the current CCT Central Europe and the upcoming Cash Cup on the weekend:

• #20 Evil Geniuses: 221.3 Points

• #21 paiN: 204.4 Points

• #22 Astralis: 197.9 Points

Remember that Astralis could gain a maximum of 27.8 points to reach 225.7, and previously Evil Geniuses needed to get 4th and paiN needed to get 2nd to reach the required points. However, with the event weight changes, we now see that EG can earn an 8th place seed and earn 7.12 points, giving themselves 228.4, which is out of the reach of Astralis. For paiN, they can earn 25.74 points from 3rd place, giving them a total of 230.1 points, pushing past EG and far beyond what Astralis could hope to gain.

This will be a slight boon to their chances, however paiN is set for a clash later on today as they play ECL Relegation against Villainous. Unless the match is moved, this might impact paiN's ability to compete in the Cash Cup and earn a Katowice spot. However, paiN could possibly forfeit the match and attempt to schedule their lower-bracket match tomorrow at a time that does not clash with the Cash Cup.