Week in Preview: CWL January 13th, 2019
| Tags: Call of Duty
| Author Jacob Shrader
A glimpse into the upcoming week in competitive Call of Duty
As of today, only four teams have earned themselves a spot in the CWL Pro League for the Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 season. These teams, OpTic Gaming, Splyce, Luminosity, and eUnited clinched their spots back in December at the CWL Las Vegas Open.
With 16 total spots in the Pro League, twelve teams still have the opportunity to play in the premier Call of Duty esports league – and that opportunity comes this week, from the 16th to the 20th, in Columbus, Ohio at the CWL Pro League Qualifier.
There are 28 teams in the qualifier, split into four pools of seven. The pools are as follows:
Pool A: Team Sween, Team Reciprocity, Faze Clan, Project18, Faze Clan Black, Team 3G, and Enigma6.
Pool B: Lightening Pandas, Team Envy, G2 Esports, Team Heretics, Tainted Minds, Fact Revolution, and Giants.
Pool C: Team Space, 100 Thieves, Pittsburgh Knights, ExcelerateGG, Midnight Esports, Overtime, and Mazer Gaming.
Pool D: Evil Geniuses, Red Reserve, UYU, Mindfreak, Imperial, Riders, and Nation of Power.
Teams are listed in order of respective seed.
There is a multitude of different teams competing in this year's Qualifiers, ranging from well-known teams that have been competing for almost a decade, such as the FaZe Clan, to squads looking to make a name for themselves in the Call of Duty community such as 100 Thieves after being revamped in August of 2018.
The tournament format is similar to CWL Qualifiers of years past. The teams in each pool will face off in round robin format, playing a best of five series against each of the other teams in their pool until everyone has played each other once. From there, The top two teams from each pool will advance and the bottom two will be sent home. The remaining seeds, namely the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place teams in each pool, will be entered into a new, 12-team bracket. The 12-team bracket will be double elimination to decide the final four spots in the CWL Pro League.
The Qualifier is one of the most exciting CWL events of the year, as teams and their players are given the once in a lifetime opportunity to officially become pro gamers if they advance past the qualifier and into the CWL Pro League.
More updates will come as we move closer to the Qualifiers.
The event will be streamed live on Twitch via the official Call of Duty Twitch Channel as well as majorleaguegaming.com.
Jacob 'kanyeshrayz' Shrader is an esports writer who focuses on the competitive aspects of Call of Duty and Fortnite. He is a master prestige with over 40,000 EKIA in Black Ops 4 and has hundreds of combined wins in Fortnite. You can learn more about Jacob on our About page.