Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has only been out for a couple of weeks, but one team of professional players has already scored a $100,000 prize in a tournament. A team assembled by Michael Grzesiek, better known as Shroud, won the Doritos Bowl, the first official Black Ops 4 tournament. He led his team to victory over three other notable participants: Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, DrLupo, and CouRage.
The tournament took place at TwitchCon in the San Jose Convention Center and pitted the four teams against one another in Blackout, Call of Duty’s new battle royale mode. With a $250,000 prize pool on the line, the teams played four sessions, each one hour long, to see who could accumulate the most points. In the end, Shroud’s team pulled away from the pack with a total of 499.5 points. CouRage, the second place finishing team, racked up 431.25 points. Meanwhile, Fortnite streamers Ninja and DrLupo finished with 374 and 350.75 points, respectively.
Digital Trends’ social media guru Riley Winn caught up with Shroud after his team’s victory. Shroud told Digital Trends that he started preparing for the Doritos Bowl early. “The second I found out the format I pretty much played like that format in regular home practice,” Shroud said.
Since Blackout requires a large player count, the four teams played against the general public throughout each heat. “I knew we were playing against the regular online public…I’m going to figure out the rotations, figure out where the most people are and it paid off. We had so many frags,” Shroud said.
Shroud, a former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro and well-known PUBG player, has embraced Call of Duty’s battle royale mode. “Oh I think it’s amazing. I was waiting for something like this for so long, because I’m a huge fan of how fast-paced Call of Duty is and I wanted to see a fast-paced battle royale.”
You can watch the full interview above to find out how many bags of Doritos Shroud thinks he could eat in a week and what he plans on doing with his share of the prize money.
It’s too soon to tell if Blackout will turn into a viable eSport, but the first tournament certainly was exciting.
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