Team Liquid has announced their withdrawal from IEM Beijing.
The organiser of the event billed for China has announced that Liquid will be replaced by ENCE.
The North Americans decided not to participate in the event because they want to prepare better for tournaments. The decision was taken in order not to attend two CS: GO events in November consecutively.
The IEM Beijing will commence on November 7 – five days after BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen, which Liquid will be honouring.
Speaking on the decision taken, Liquid’s star rifler, Jonathan “EliGE,” Jablonowski said the decision was taken because traveling to events has taken a toll on the team.
While noting that the team has travelled for almost 200 days this year, he said it has been hard on them mentally.
“As we come to the end of an extremely busy year, we have decided to make a concession to the schedule and miss IEM Beijing. We offer our sincere apologies to the fans who wanted to see us play, but we hope to be back at full strength soon #LetsGoLiquid,” a tweet from their Twitter handle reads.
Liquid had a fantastic year dominating other teams in the first part of the year. They won six events in a row and the Intel Grand Slam.
They, however, failed to live up to expectations at the StarLadder Berlin Major in August, after Astralis sent them packing in the last-eight.
They later participated in two more tournaments finishing third at ESL One New York in September. Evil Geniuses, their North American rivals, were crowned champion. At DreamHack Masters in Malmö in Sweden, the North Americans couldn’t reach the playoffs.
Team Liquid is not the first team to skip tournaments. Astralis adopted the same strategy in 2017. Their star player, Nicolai “device” Reedtz, was diagnosed with a stomach stress disease, and it got worse with traveling and jet lag.
After adopting the strategy, Astralis became the best team in the world last year after Emil “Magisk” Reif joined the team in February 2018.
Liquid might be trying to replicate the same strategy and be better prepared for upcoming tournaments.
IEM Beijing will be a tough tournament to miss as Astralis and EG will participate. Either of them can gain an Intel Grand Slam point if they emerge the winner.
Written by: Oladipupo Mojeed.
