Both favourites, AVE and Trasko, made their way successfully through the second CIS qualifier for IEM Fall, securing themselves spots at the closed qualifier later this month. The aforementioned teams came into this qualifier as the highest ranked squads.
AVE experienced their toughest challenge in their best-of-one quarter-final, a Andrii “sleiden” Kopanytsia powered 2EASY nearly taking the game all the way on Nuke, with a seven-round streak on their CT side not quite enough to secure overtime, and it finished 16-13.
AVE then faced benched in a best-of-three semi-final, once again coming out on the correct side of a close Nuke 16-13, before securing the series 16-10 on Inferno. With two spots at the closed qualifier available, there was no grand final, and AVE secured their berth with this victory.
w0nderful produced the performance of the qualifier against EC Kyiv
On the other side of the bracket, Trasko cruised through their quarter-final against MayBe 16-6 on Nuke, taking them to a best-of-three semi-final against EC Kyiv. The teams traded map picks, 16-9 to EC Kyiv on Dust2 and 16-14 to Trasko on Ancient, Trasko only taking Ancient by virtue of a monstrous 38-kill performance by AWPer Igor “w0nderful” Zhdanov.
The deciding map was Overpass, and it was an incredibly tightly fought battle that went all the way to overtime after Trasko had clawed their way back from a 14-10 deficit. The back-and-forth nature of the game continued into overtime, with both teams struggling to find a decisive 3-0 half in OT. It took until the final half of the third overtime for Trasko to finally push us over the line, 25-23.
These two teams join six others at the closed qualifier, and will be battling it out for one of the six spots available for IEM Fall 2021 CIS.
See the final team list for the closed qualifier below:
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