Day three of the CSGO StarLadder Major saw more teams drop out or advance further in the tournament. Today, we saw three teams reach the New Legends stage, joining the ranks of Astralis or Team Liquid. Meanwhile, two teams were sent home packing and will have to go through the struggle of qualifying for the next Major. Let’s talk about Syman, G2, CR4ZY, and more.
Syman Gaming strike once more, eliminate FURIA
FURIA were definitely on the list of many people’s pick’ems to make it through to the next stage of the StarLadder Major. On the flip side, Syman Gaming, one of the biggest underdogs of the tournaments, have stunned yet another team. Ilya “Perfect” Zalutskiy has yet again shown his undeniable potential on both Train and Inferno, as the best-of-three turned into a relatively easy match for Syman. The CIS team swept the Brazilians 16-9 and 16-7 respectively, sending FURIA packing back to South America. Meanwhile, Syman Gaming’s dream lives on as they will fight for their life with a 2-2 score.
G2 fend off forZe
Possibly the most intense match of the day saw G2 fight an incredible bo3 against forZe. Kenny “kennyS” Schrub’s side started out on Dust2, which saw an uncountable amounts of overtimes. Despite G2 having an initial 11-3 lead at halftime of regular time, the CIS contenders made a comeback to force overtime. To cut things short, a back-and-forth encounter developed, making it almost a double-game as G2 finally closed things out at a startling 28-25 score. A true test of nerves for both sides.
Inferno ended much faster as G2 took the series 2-0 with a 16-12 score. ForZe were yet again at the brink of mounting a comeback as G2 were choking a 15-3 initial lead. Fortunately for the French, they managed to barely close things out at 16-12 to deny the CIS team further hope of turning things around. G2 advance while forZe continue their battle with a 2-2 score.
Grayhound send Complexity home
The boys from down under, Grayhound, have survived the American Complexity as they quite swiftly dealt with Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan’s team. The first map, Dust2, was a tough battle as the half finished 8-7 for the Americans. However, on terrorist side, the Australians were a sturdy bunch and drifted off to an easy 16-11 victory. The momentum then carried over as Inferno turned out to be a breeze for Grayhound. The team dismantled Complexity on the counter-terrorist side 12-3 before closing things out fast on t-side at 16-4. It was a disappointing performance overall by Complexity and the youngest player at the StarLadder Major, Owen “oBo” Schlatter.
NRG breeze past AVANGAR
NRG didn’t have the best of starts to the StarLadder Major. The team lost in the first round to DreamEaters, which ruined many pick’ems. Nevertheless, the Americans shook things off to get two straight wins and finally picked up a third against AVANGAR to advance to the next stage.
With Train and Dust2 chosen from the map pool, both maps seemed to be mostly a formality for NRG. Tarik “tarik” Celik’s team picked up Train 16-8 following a blowout by Ethan “Ethan” Arnold and Vincent “Brehze” Cayonte; they both fragged 22 AVANGAR players. Dust2 was an even bigger nightmare for AVANGAR as tarik turned on. Absolutely nothing went AVANGAR’s way as the half finished at 11-4 for NRG on their ct-side. On t-side, the North Americans closed things off quickly by getting consecutive five-rounds to deny AVANGAR any chance of a comeback at 16-4. The CIS team lives to see another day as they go 2-2.
Vitality recover and get rid of HellRaisers
With an extremely rough start to the Major, #2 team in the world Vitality survives. This time, the so-far disappointing French side has successfully eliminated HellRaisers while going 2-2. The two-match battle on Inferno and Mirage finally got us a glimpse of Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut as he was stellar on both maps. The French closed out Inferno 16-8 before moving onto Mirage. The second map turned out to be Nathan “NBK-” Schmitt’s playground as he led his team with 24 frags to give his side a 16-11 win. Despite Tomáš “oskar” Šťastný’s best efforts, HellRaisers are eliminated from the Major.
CR4ZY deny the underdogs as DreamEaters come close
The last best-of-three matchup was a close one. The CIS underdogs, DreamEaters, caught another team off guard as they played their hearts out against the respectable CR4ZY roster. At the only three-map game of the day, Inferno was bagged by DreamEaters as Nestor “LETN1” Tanić was more than invisible in the matchup, leading to the Russian squad winning the map at 16-12.
At the brink of yet another upset, CR4ZY switched on for Dust2. Nemanja “nexa” Isaković’s 30 frags took DreamEaters by surprise as nexa was all over the place on both sides. 16-11 was the end score for CR4ZY as the decider, Mirage, ensued. Funnily enough, Mirage ended up replicating the score of Dust2, 11-4 and 7-5 at halftimes, totaling 16-11 once more for CR4ZY. This time, nexa was joined by Nemanja “huNter-” Kovac at the top of the scoreboard. In the end, DreamEaters go 2-2 while CR4ZY reach the New Legends stage. Despite the score, Anton “speed4k” Titov’s unimaginable AWP shots cannot go unmentioned, as we all hope he replicates his performance on day four.
What did you think of today’s StarLadder matchups?
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I like to give out free AK-47 headshots in CS: GO, spend some quality time in the kitchen marinating a tender chicken breast and approximately 3 times a week I lift some relatively heavy metal stuff at the gym. Oh, and I also like to write about e-sports and everything related to gaming. Who knew one could have such contrasting interests?
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