We’ll likely watch plenty of action on Dust 2 this week at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade.
With the conclusion of ESL Pro League Season 19 on Sunday, May 12, we'll officially move to CS2's new map pool which features the classic Dust 2 instead of Overpass — and Team Spirit's dedicated sniper Dmitriy "sh1ro" Sokolov is all aboard the change.
The first tier-one tournament to feature Dust 2 in place of Overpass in the CS2 map pool will be the BetBoom Dacha Belgrade, which will see top teams such as sh1ro's Spirit, Virtus.pro, MOUZ, and HEROIC fight for their share of the $500,000 prize pool. While Valve had removed Overpass during EPL, the competition kept running in the previous patch.
Sh1ro talks about the new CS2 map pool
Though sh1ro stressed that he enjoyed playing Overpass and it was one of the best maps for Spirit —100% win rate in 2024 — he's happy that Dust 2 has made its way back into the official map pool.
"Overpass was one of my favorite maps. We played it a lot. And at the same time I like it, I'm glad Overpass got removed," sh1ro said in an interview with esports.gg on May 12 ahead of BetBoom Dacha Belgrade. "I'm happy that Dust 2 is back in the map pool. As you said, it's more of a sniper map. There are a lot of long distances for AWPers to shoot, and in the future, I'd like if Train came back in place of Vertigo."
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BetBoom Dacha Belgrade to mark Spirit and sh1ro's return to CS2 competition
BetBoom Dacha Belgrade will be the first tournament that Spirit will play following their heartbreaking elimination to FaZe Clan at the PGL Copenhagen Major quarterfinals in March. Many fans missed Spirit in EPL, but even though they got a last-minute invite for the competition, they couldn't attend it because they had to sort out their visas, according to sh1ro.
They used all this free time, however, to practice and prepare for the BetBoom Dacha Belgrade and other upcoming tournaments.
"So we trained a lot," sh1ro said. "We had a boot camp and we watched our mistakes from previous tournaments. Although everyone is expecting us to win every tournament, right now, we are just trying to show a CS that we believe in and show our best to try to win it."
Spirit will debut at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade on Wednesday, May 15 against Aurora. The tournament will run from May 14 to 19.
