North American Counter-Strike has flourished in 2019. Evil Geniuses surpassed Astralis and Team Liquid to become the top-ranked CS:GO team in the world today, according to HLTV’s world rankings.
EG now sit atop the leaderboard with 906 points as of Oct. 28, one day after defeating Fnatic to win StarSeries i-League season eight—a tournament that Liquid and Astralis opted to skip.
Astralis dropped to second place with 876 points. Fnatic are now in the third place with 733 points, while Liquid fell two positions. They have 669 points after not winning a tournament since the player break.
EG won their first championship of the year in September at ESL One New York. They beat Astralis in a best-of-five grand final when they were playing their first tournament under EG’s banner.
Although Liquid and Astralis didn’t participate in StarSeries i-League season eight, EG definitely deserve credit. They’ve been on the rise since the StarLadder Berlin Major in August when they lost in the semifinals to Astralis.
It’s unclear if they’ll be able to hold onto the top spot in HLTV’s rankings, however. Liquid and Astralis will play at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen this weekend and they’re the two favorites to win it. But EG can answer back at IEM Beijing on Nov. 7 against teams like Astralis, Vitality, and mousesports.
North American CS:GO was historically mocked by Europeans, but the region now has two solid squads fighting for the title of best team in the world.
