EG Gold and Saints fight for a spot in Katowice

After four days full of Counter-Strike, the ESL Impact Katowice 2023 North America closed qualifier has its teams defined.

The closed qualifier will feature only one game between EG Gold and Saints, after both teams won one of the two open qualifiers.

The first qualifier had 12 teams and the first round saw some upsets. The quarterfinals were the total opposite, with not even one upset, as EG Gold, Valkyries, Please Send Bocks, and Saints qualified for the semis. Both games had the same score, 16-8, and the higher seeds, EG and Please Send Bocks, moved on to the final match of the first qualifier. The opening map, Overpass, went EG Gold's way with a comfortable margin, as Anna "garden" Gutierrez posted up 25 kills and an ADR of 98.4. Then it was time for Ancient, which went to overtime and ultimately ended 19-16 to Please Send Bocks. Kiara "m1lky" Makua and Vanessa "Vanessa" Gideon both got 30 kills by the end of the map. To decide the winner of the qualifier, the teams played a long match of Inferno. EG Gold managed to get the win with a score of 16-13. This was a bloodthirsty game as most of the players got 20+ kills.

With EG Gold waiting for their opponents in the closed qualifier, Please Send Bocks had to redeem themselves. Unfortunately for them, they fell in their first match of the second qualifier against We Dem Gurlz, who went on to reach the final of the qualifier. This iteration only featured nine teams and the semifinals had two teams that didn't reach that stage in the prior qualifier face each other, We Dem Gurlz and H3IIO, and two teams that only came so far before, Valkyries and Saints. The first match had We Dem Gurlz destroy H3IIO 16-1, and Saints defeating Valkyries 16-10. The grand final saw Saints sweeping their opponents after 16-10 and 16-14 scores. Paula "paula" got 31 kills to close out the series on Inferno, and send Saints to the closed qualifier.

The match between EG Gold and Saints will start at 08:00PM and the winner will secure a spot in ESL Impact Katowice 2023, alongside CLG Red, FURIA, HSG, Nigma Galaxy, NAVI Javelins, and two more teams, one from Europe and another from South America.