BIG Krimbo out of Pinnacle Cup Championship playoffs due to COVID-19, k1to to stand in

BIG’s CS:GO rifler Karim “⁠Krimbo⁠” Moussa will have to sit out of the $250,000 Pinnacle Cup Championship playoffs as a result of testing positive for COVID-19 earlier today.

This comes as a blow to BIG’s chances of winning the Pinnacle Cup Championship because he has had a decent impact on the competition so far, averaging a 1.04 rating after four maps played. The German team will use their former player and current academy member Nils “⁠k1to⁠” Gruhne, who caught a last-minute flight, as a stand-in for the remainder of the event.

Curiously, k1to played for BIG’s main team from January 2020 to March 2022, when he was moved to the academy lineup to open space for the arrival of Krimbo. He helped the team win tournaments such as Funspark ULTI in April 2021, DreamHack Open Summer Europe in August 2020, and DreamHack Masters Spring Europe in June 2020, and is fairly familiarized with the way that captain Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz likes to play.

After the end of the Pinnacle Cup Championship tomorrow, June 11, BIG’s next appointment is in Lisbon, Portugal at the BLAST Premier Spring Final, which kicks off on June 15. It’s unclear whether Krimbo will recover in time to play at the $425,000 CS:GO tournament.

K1to and BIG will face Astralis today at 1pm CT in the Pinnacle Cup Championship’s upper bracket final. The winner will move directly to the grand finals while the loser will have to play against Heroic in the consolidation final.