The $11,000 Virtus.pro Staff Cup has now had its groups drawn, meaning that some of CS:GO's biggest organisations are ready to face off against each other for a much increased prize-pot.

When the second Staff Cup was first announced in April, it featured a $1,000 prize-pot which was similar to the first edition of the Staff Cup which HLTV.org won.

For the second Staff Cup, Virtus.pro revised a rule about ex-professional players competing for organisations in the cup: whereas formerly players could not have competed on a professional level for at least six months prior to this cup, the staff cup is now open to all members of an organisation, as long as they are not on an active lineup.

cArn

cArn will be one of the ex-pros in the Staff Cup

But perhaps most importantly, and given surging interest in the tournament, the prize-pool has increased dramatically to $11,000, meaning that organisation's may fight with a little extra gusto to be crowned CS:GO staff masters.

The groups have been drawn accordingly and are as follows:

Group A Group B Hitbox.tv Hitbox.tv RGN.tv RGN.tv 99dmg.de 99dmg.de Virtus.pro Virtus.pro Arenazero.net Arenazero.net 1GAME.ua 1GAME.ua /r/Globaloffensive /r/Globaloffensive Vakarm.net Vakarm.net Group C Group D HLTV.org HLTV.org Gaming.dk Gaming.dk Skillz.lv Skillz.lv Fraglider.pt Fraglider.pt Game Show Game Show Efrag.net Efrag.net Navi-gaming.com Navi-gaming.com Trasgo.net Trasgo.net Group E Group F Gameplan Gameplan Russian e-Sport Federation Russian e-Sport Federation Freaks 4U Gaming Freaks 4U Gaming FlipSid3 Tactics FlipSid3 Tactics Gfinity Gfinity Goodgame.ru Goodgame.ru Hungarian Esport TV Hungarian Esport TV SLTV.selectah SLTV.selectah Group G Group H SLTV.squad SLTV.squad Clan Mystik Clan Mystik Hellraisers.pro Hellraisers.pro XPC XPC fnatic fnatic FACEIT FACEIT Ninjas in Pyjamas Ninjas in Pyjamas Fragbite.se Fragbite.se

In these lineups many former professional players will be competing such as fnatic's Patrik "⁠cArn⁠" Sättermon and Jonatan "⁠Devilwalk⁠" Lundberg, Virtus.pro's Jakub "⁠kuben⁠" Gurczynski, Na`Vi's Sergey "⁠starix⁠" Ischuk and more, to be revealed.

As previously mentioned, the GSL best-of-one group stage will take place on the weekend of May 23-24. Two advancing staff teams from each group will then compete in playoffs on May 30-31; all playoffs games will also be best-of-one except for the grand final which will be a best-of-three series.

The map-pool utilised will be Valve's standard map-pool of seven maps, including de_train. Matches will be made available on our hot matches panel as they arise.

Group draw video:

Follow HLTV.org's stich on Twitter