DreamHack Masters Malmö viewer's guide

What is DreamHack Masters Malmö?

DreamHack Masters Malmö is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament taking place in Malmö, Sweden. The prize pool is $250,000, with the winner claiming the lion's share: $100,000.

DreamHack Masters Malmö is the second Masters event hosted by DreamHack in 2019. The first was DreamHack Masters Dallas, where Team Liquid beat ENCE and lifted the trophy in front of a home crowd. Sixteen of the best Counter-Strike teams will be present in Sweden with the StarLadder Berlin Major and ESL One New York tourneys still fresh in the minds of players and fans alike.

The initial games are best-of-one format, with all other matches played in best-of-three format. This means teams will play one of the seven maps in the current competitive pool following a veto in this opening matches, before playing at least two maps per match in the latter stages of the event.

When is DreamHack Masters Malmö?

DreamHack Masters Malmö takes place 1st-6th October, with the playoffs in Malmö Arena taking place over the weekend.

The opening best-of-one matches of Group A between Astralis and Team Envy as well as G2 Esports and FURIA will start at 11:00 BST on 1st October.

Subsequent matches will begin shortly after the previously scheduled games conclude. Group A will play all of their matches before Group B play theirs later on 1st October.

The quarterfinals will begin at 15:00 BST on 4th October, with both matches scheduled to be played that day.

Semifinal matches are expected at 14:00 BST while the grandfinal is scheduled for a 16:00 BST start on 6th October.

How to watch DreamHack Masters Malmö?

DreamHack Masters Malmö will be free to watch on Twitch.tv on both the main stream and the secondary stream. There are two streams due to two matches in the group stage being played at the same time. To check which games will be which stream, HLTV pages for each match will have a link to the correct one on them and it will be stated clearly on the primary stream which game is where.

Streams in other languages will also be found on Twitch under the CS:GO category.

Which teams are at DreamHack Masters Malmö?

There are sixteen teams attending DreamHack Masters Malmö this year. Eleven of them were directly invited based on their ranking, while four qualifiers, European, North American, Oceanic and Chinese, decided all but one of the remaining spots. In anticipation of the ESL Pro Tour next year linking smaller DreamHack Open events to the more prestigious Masters, DreamHack Open Summer offered the winner a spot in Malmö and this was claimed by OpTic Gaming in June.

The full list of teams is below:

• Astralis
• ENCE
• Evil Geniuses (formerly NRG Esports)
• Fnatic
• FURIA Esports
• G2 Esports
• Team Liquid
• Natus Vincere
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• North
• Team Vitality
• OpTic Gaming (technically ex-OpTic)
• mousesports (European Qualifier)
• Team Envy (North American Qualifier)
• Grayhound Gaming (Oceanic Qualifier)
• TYLOO (Chinese Qualifier)

Who will win DreamHack Masters Malmö?

After a dominant 2018 and strong start to 2019 for Astralis, their era came to an end in the middle of the year due to inactivity. While Team Liquid rose up as the new best team in the world and claimed numerous trophies in the middle of the year, a player break before the StarLadder Berlin Major saw the Danish squad of Astralis claim their fourth ever Major title.

While both Astralis and Liquid were expected to do well in New York, Liquid and Astralis were both defeated by Evil Geniuses. EG bought out the NRG Esports roster that had struggled to make it into finals previously despite their core's individual talent. By claiming their first trophy, EG blew the doors wide open for who will claim the DreamHack Masters Malmö trophy.

Natus Vincere will be looking to bounce back after a last place disappointment at BLAST Pro Series: Moscow which marked their final event with Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko while ENCE will be looking to show that the addition of Miikka "suNny" Kemppi was worth the removal of in-game leader Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen.