{"id":21554,"date":"2018-12-10T13:16:05","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T13:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/?p=21554"},"modified":"2018-12-10T13:16:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T13:16:05","slug":"astralis-win-intel-grand-slam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/2018\/12\/astralis-win-intel-grand-slam","title":{"rendered":"Astralis cements legendary run with Intel Grand Slam victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\">The inaugural <strong>Intel Grand Slam<\/strong> &#8211; a monumental initiative used to award the most dominant team in <strong>Counter-Strike: Global Offensive<\/strong> &#8211; has come to a close.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\">RFRSH Entertainment-owned team <strong>Astralis<\/strong>, made up of entirely Danish players, is the first team to claim the Intel Grand Slam title and prize winnings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21555\" src=\"https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam.jpg\" alt=\"Astralis Intel Grand Slam\" width=\"975\" height=\"675\" srcset=\"https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam.jpg 975w, https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam-768x532.jpg 768w, https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam-100x70.jpg 100w, https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam-218x150.jpg 218w, https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam-696x482.jpg 696w, https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Astralis-Intel-Grand-Slam-607x420.jpg 607w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 975px) 100vw, 975px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\"><a href=\"https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/2017\/06\/esl-intel-1-million-partnership\/\">Announced on June 12th, 2017<\/a>, Intel and ESL revealed the initiative at E3 as a way to raise the stakes of the competitive circuit in CS:GO and rewarding the first team to display a certain level of dominance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\"><strong>John Bonini, Vice President and General Manager of VR, Gaming and Esports Group at Intel<\/strong> discussed the victory: \u201cCongratulations to Astralis, who have thrilled the world with a dominant run to become the first team to complete the Intel Grand Slam. The Intel Grand Slam is the toughest win in all of CS:GO, and we look forward to many more triumphs in the future.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\">To win the Intel Grand Slam and claim the $1,000,000 (\u00a3789,610), a team had to win four championships at ESL and DreamHack Masters tournaments within 10 events. The four victories for Astralis were at DreamHack Masters Marseille, CS:GO Pro League Season 7 finals in Dallas, IEM Chicago, and the CS:GO Pro League Season 8 finals in Odense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\"><strong>Michal Blicharz, Vice President of Pro Gaming at ESL<\/strong> added: \u201cCompleting the Intel Grand Slam is one of the most difficult feats in all of esports because of how insanely competitive CS:GO is. What Astralis have done is nothing short of historic. This was truly the era of Astralis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\">The Intel Grand Slam has now reset, starting all over again at the next CS:GO Major: IEM Katowice. This event starts in February 2019, giving teams a small break after a busy year of competition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\"><strong>Esports Insider says: If there was any doubt that Astralis was the team to beat in CS:GO throughout the year, then this key achievement has cemented it. The Intel Grand Slam displays a great commitment to esports from both ESL and Intel, and it&#8217;s exciting to see it return for a second iteration.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif\">[maxbutton id=&#8221;4&#8243; ]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The inaugural Intel Grand Slam &#8211; a monumental initiative used to award the most dominant team in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive &#8211; has come to a close. RFRSH Entertainment-owned team Astralis, made up of entirely Danish players, is the first team to claim the Intel Grand Slam title and prize winnings. Announced on June 12th, 2017, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/esportsinsider.com\/2018\/12\/astralis-win-intel-grand-slam\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":21555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","esi_template":"default","excluded":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,239,51,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-counter-strike","category-europe","category-events-calendar-news","category-esports-titles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Astralis cements legendary run with Intel Grand Slam victory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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