The North American division of ESL Pro League Season 3 concludes as Luminosity, Cloud9, OpTiC, and Liquid have booked spots at the $512,000 finals taking place in London, United Kingdom from May 12-15.

Over the course of nine weeks 12 teams in the North American region fought for four spots at the third season's finals as well as the $119,000 allocated for each divison's online portion of the third season of the ESL Pro League.

Luminosity were a step above the competition in general, winning 18 of their 22 matches (the second best record in the entire league behind NiP in Europe) and easily booking a first place berth into the finals.

The second seed in the North American division may come as a bit of a surprise as Cloud9 finished with a 16-6 record, generally winning all of their matches versus less disciplined competition (although they lost both matches in a head-to-head against Liquid) and thus staying an inch above the fray below them.



Liquid scrape through to the ESL Pro League finals in London

Coming in next are OpTic, who managed to finish a single win above the cut-off line and thus clinch a third seed spot (partially powered by the antics of newfound addition Oscar "⁠mixwell⁠" Cañellas), although the mostly Canadian team did lose one of their matches to NRG on the final night and risked being part of a traffic jam tie if they lost their second match to Peter "⁠ptr⁠" Gurney & co. (which did not happen).

As the final spate of results trickled in, Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin's Liquid breezed through a game against Splyce and thus finished 14-8 with the same record as NRG. Since the two teams had a 1-1 head-to-head record, it was Liquid who advanced to the finals since they possessed far more regulation rounds won (76 to NRG's 2).

Two teams who narrowly failed to qualify for the $512,000 finals were Selfless and Renegades, who both finished 13-9 and just missed entering into a tiebreaker for fourth place.

The final standings for the North American division of Season 3 of the ESL Pro League are:

- Finals spot 1. Luminosity - Finals spot - Finals spot 2. Cloud9 - Finals spot - Finals spot 3. OpTic - Finals spot - Finals spot 4. Liquid - Finals spot - $27,000 5. NRG - $27,000 - $23,500 6. Selfless - $23,500 - $20,000 7. Renegades - $20,000 - $16,500 8. Winterfox - $16,500 -$13,000 9. Splyce -$13,000 - $9,500 10. CLG - $9,500 - $6,000 11. Complexity - $6,000 - $3,500 12. KKona - $3,500

As ESL have adjusted the format of the league, which will have 14 spots in the next season, KKona do have a chance to stay in the league, as they will face the second-placed team from the Premier division to keep their spot.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter