MLG Anaheim Preview

Major League Gaming have returned to Call of Duty, and they’re certainly back with a bang. It’s the signature Call of Duty event that never fails to entertain, MLG Anaheim is here. We’re talking double elimination open bracket with pool play, moving into a double elimination Championship bracket on Saturday, when we’ll be back to run you through all the action from Friday, and take a look at the odds being offered around the internet. For today, we’re going to give you all the info you need for the entire weekend, and give our opinions on who to watch out for throughout the tournament.

General Info

Location: Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA
Date: June 10-12
Format: Double elimination open bracket feeding into pool play. Top 2 move on to double elimination championship bracket.
Map Format: CWL map pool, Open bracket – BO3, Pool Play – BO5
Prize Pool: $100k ($40k – 1st place)

Talent Lineup

Clint “Maven” Evans –
Jack “Courage” Dunlop
Matt “Mr X” Morello
Ben “Benson” Bowe
Christopher Puckett
John “Revan” Boble
James “Replays” Crowder
Joe “Merk” Deluca
Tyler “TeePee” Polchow

Pools

Pool A
- OpTic Gaming
- TSM
- Cloud 9
- Team from Open Bracket
Pool B
- Rise Nation
- H2K Gaming
- Hundred Thieves
- Team from Open Bracket
Pool C
- FaZe Clan
- Elevate
- Luminosity
- Team from Open Bracket
Pool D
- Team EnVyUs
- Dream Team
- CompLexity
- Team from Open Bracket

Schedule

DX Racer Preshow – 2:30PM PDT
Open Bracket Beings – 3PM PDT
Pool Play begins – 3PM PDT

Where to Watch

You’ve got a few more options than usual this time around. Firstly, you can stick with the tradition MLG.tv, or move across to Twitch.tv if you’d rather. The action will be spread out across Alpha, Bravo and Charlie streams, so keep an eye on where your favourite team are playing. MLG production should be running match updates across all streams so you shouldn’t miss out. Where things really get interesting are with MLG’s EVE, or enhanced viewing experience. This will be Call of Duty’s first showing of EVE, and will feature scoreboards, player and match stats, tweets and more. Either way, you shouldn’t miss out on much of the action

Who to Watch

You get it by now…OpTic Gaming, FaZe Clan and Rise Nation are great squads and don’t ever count them out, but you don’t need to hear that again. “Who might surprise us?” is a better question. Our top outside picks for this weekend are without a doubt Cloud9 and Team EnVyUs. Cloud9 are riding out a 3 win streak, with a notable 3-2 victory over FaZe Clan, as well as Dream Team. Sure, they face OpTic in their pool, but they’ve also got 11th place TSM and an open bracket team which they’ve got a great chance of beating for a solid top 8 place. Depending on how the bracket goes, a 2nd place for Cloud9 in their bracket would set themselves up for a match against Team EnVyUs if they were to come top of their pool (which also looks likely). Cloud9 vs EnVyUs would be a close matchup, but at least one would reach top 4, and from there who knows what they could do.

It’s going to be a wild weekend of classic Call of Duty action. We’ll be back tomorrow with an update on the odds for the weekend, but for now, sit back and enjoy some fantastic open bracket/pool play fun.