Elisa Masters Espoo curse? 3 top CS:GO players are out of the $200,000 event

Three of the best CS:GO players who would normally be attending Elisa Masters Espoo—Astralis’ AWPer dev1ce, Fnatic’s rifler KRIMZ, and BIG’s sniper Florian “syrsoN” Rische—will not play the LAN tournament in Finland.

The absence of dev1ce was confirmed by Astralis one week prior to the start of the tournament. Many fans were left wondering whether or not the superstar would debut with Astralis again after his stint with Ninjas in Pyjamas. For the frustration of some, the organization’s sports director Kasper Hvidt said dev1ce wasn’t ready.

“His game sense, skills, and pure personality have been very obvious from day one, but even though we’re all eager for him to play his first tournament, we have time to do things right without forcing anything,” Hvidt said. “It is all about creating room for the best version of dev1ce we have seen.”

SyrsoN, on the other hand, was ready to play at Elisa Masters Espoo after BIG’s participation at IEM Rio Major, but the German AWPer tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 14—just two days prior to the start of Elisa Masters Espoo. Josef “⁠faveN⁠” Baumann took syrsoN’s spot and played his first competitive matches today after being sidelined to take care of his own health since September.

KRIMZ was also ruled out of the event today prior to Fnatic’s matches tomorrow. He played at IEM Rio Major despite having a hand injury that is affecting a nerve and his muscles, and he will use the remainder of the year to focus on the medical treatment and hopefully be back in full form in 2023.

Elisa Masters Espoo kicked off today and will run until Nov. 20. The competition has split the 12 teams into two groups: ENCE, BIG, Sprout, GamerLegion, Heet, and HAVU are in Group A, while Fnatic, Astralis, Bad News Eagles, Complexity, SAW, and 500 have been placed in Group B.