BIG invited to Elisa Masters Espoo

The $200,000 Finnish tournament set to take place shortly following the conclusion of the IEM Rio Major has its third team.

BIG have been announced as the second team directly invited to participate in Elisa Masters Espoo, taking place from November 16-20.

The German squad will join 11 other teams at the Espoo event, including ENCE, the other team invited so far, and HEET, who secured their spot following a victory in the Elisa Invitational Spring tournament in early July.

BIG will play at the Espoo event in mid-November

Six more participants will be determined via direct invitations, while the remaining three will earn their spot through other Elisa-organized events, including the currently ongoing Elisa Invitational Fall.

Currently 15th in the world, BIG are the highest-ranked name on the list so far. The German squad has endured a period of turmoil in the past few months as they had to deal with several bouts of illnesses and played multiple tournaments with substitutes in place of Josef "⁠faveN⁠" Baumann and Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa.

In August, the team brought Nils "⁠k1to⁠" Gruhne back into the main roster from the academy team to replace long-standing member Tizian "⁠tiziaN⁠" Feldbusch.

Before participating in the Espoo tournament, BIG will attend the European Regional Major Ranking event in Malta, and if they qualify, the IEM Rio Major. At the RMR, the team will once again have to utilize a substitute, their academy team's star rifler Elias "⁠s1n⁠" Stein, due to faveN being sidelined by another sickness.

The following three teams are now confirmed to attend the Finnish tournament:

ENCE
HEET
BIG

Tizian 'tiziaN' Feldbusch Age: 26 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.96 Maps played: 1764 KPR: 0.64 DPR: 0.66 Josef 'faveN' Baumann Age: 22 Team: BIGB Rating 1.0: 1.08 Maps played: 1365 KPR: 0.74 DPR: 0.65 Elias 's1n' Stein Age: 20 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 1.03 Maps played: 237 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.64 Karim 'Krimbo' Moussa Age: 20 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 372 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.64 HEET #26 Audric 'JACKZ' JugAlexandre 'bodyy' PianaroThomas 'Djoko' PavoniPierre 'Ex3rcice' BulingeAurélien 'afro' Drapier BIG #15 Johannes 'tabseN' WodarzFlorian 'syrsoN' RischeNils 'k1to' GruhneJosef 'faveN' BaumannKarim 'Krimbo' Moussa Nils 'k1to' Gruhne Age: 23 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 0.99 Maps played: 1286 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.69 ENCE #17 Marco 'Snappi' PfeifferValdemar 'valde' Bjørn VangsåPavle 'Maden' BoškovićPaweł 'dycha' DychaÁlvaro 'SunPayus' García