The Majors Revolution: what is going to change with MR12 Majors?

CS2 release brings on plenty of changes and one of those is the switch to MR12 in tournaments. For many players, MR12 Majors seem like an outlandish idea - but what will that system change mean in reality, and does it actually change a lot? To illustrate that, we simulated what would the results of BLAST.tv Paris Major be if it was played in MR12.

Spoiler alert: only less than 7% of maps would have a different winner!

On Friday, HLTV.org posted an analysis of why Valve decided to switch from MR15 to MR12, in which they compared how much time the regular CS:GO match takes compared to “traditional” sports like football or basketball. In the analysis, we could see that a typical CS:GO match, where teams had to play all 3 maps in BO3 took almost 3.5h. How much time we could save by switching to MR12?

Just to recap: the standard round format for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is MR15, which stands for "Max Rounds 15." In a match, teams play 15 rounds on each side (terrorist and counter-terrorist), and the first team to win 16 rounds wins the match. In Counter-Strike 2 Valve decided to switch to MR12.

The BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 was the nineteenth and final Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship. It was held in Paris, France from May 8 to 21, 2023. Twenty-four teams qualified for the tournament to compete for glory and $500,000. Team Vitality won the major, defeating GamerLegion in the grand final 2–0, winning 16:6 on the first and 16:13 on the second map. But, how would the results of the tournament change if the matches were played in MR12, as it will be in the future tournaments in CS2?

How did we analyse it?

To check who would win the match in MR12, we took the first 12 rounds of each map, and the remaining amount of rounds played after the original team's switch. We are aware of course that the mental state of the players or their economic tactics would be different while playing MR12, but trying to emulate that would be partially guesswork and therefore of little credibility.

What’s also worth saying is that we didn’t apply the changes in the match winners, we just indicated who would win if the game was cut off according to MR12. For example, if in the first match of the tournament, the result would be different and Fluxo would win in MR12, in the next phase of the Challengers Stage they would be still in the 0:1 bracket.

Challengers Stage

We start our journey on the first stage of the tournament - the Challengers Stage. The first difference between the MR15 and MR12 would be found already in the second match of the tournament, where Monte faced FaZe. In MR12 overtime would be needed to indicate the winner of Ancient, however, the result would stay the same. The first change of winner would be observed in the second BO3 match of the Challengers Stage, where FaZe lost to ENCE. In MR12, FaZe would close the match on the 2nd map. The second match where the final result would be different with the change of max rounds format is GamerLegion versus Forze. The future finalist would have to play the 3rd map in the decider match.

In total, 5 maps in the first stage would need overtime, and 2 maps would have a different winner.

Legends Stage

In this stage, for the first result change, we wouldn’t have to wait until BO3s. In the match of 1:0 teams, where Monte faced fnatic, the Swedish team would win 13:8. Monte would also have to play third, decider, map in their match versus the future winners - Vitality. This time, the Ukrainian team would benefit from shortening the match.

The last match of this stage, the clash of NiP and Apeks, is the only BO3 match where both maps' results would change. Both maps where the teams needed overtime to determine the winner would then end with a 13:10 score in NiP’s favour.

In the Legends Stage, with the change from MR15 to MR12, 5 maps would have a different winner and 6 maps would need overtime to determine the final winner.

Champions Stage

The play-offs stage is the only phase of BLAST.tv Paris Major, where changing the number of rounds wouldn’t change any result. Interestingly enough, even though the final results in that stage were quite even, switching to MR12 would cause only 3 matches of this stage to require additional rounds in overtime.

So, is the change from MR15 to MR12 going to affect the results for professional CS players? For most of the cases, it seems not. From 117 maps played during the last Major, only 8 would have a different winner and 14 would need the overtime to determine the winner.

Does it make sense then? Considering the match length perspective, changing the round system of the matches would save 630 rounds in total, which gives almost 6 rounds per map and saves up to 15 minutes per game. That’s quite something.