FURIA now hold a streak of four series and eight map wins in a row over the Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz-led squad, which dates back to last month’s ESL Pro League Season 12, the tournament where the Brazilians first broke the winless curse up against the core of Evil Geniuses.
With the victory, Andrei “arT” Piovezan & co. have come out on top of the difficult side of the IEM New York bracket, which also featured Liquid, and await their opponent in Sunday’s best-of-five grand final, where they will face the winner of 100 Thieves and TeamOne.
KSCERATO ran rampant on Nuke with a personal-best performance
The first semi-final series began on FURIA‘s pick, Nuke. The opener looked like a walk in the park for the Brazilians, who put together a fantastic Terrorist side on the back of an incredible display by Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato. The only time Evil Geniuses managed to string rounds together was when they picked up a double AWP, but the stretch only lasted two rounds and FURIA rallied to a 12-3 scoreline.
The North American side could only aim not to make the final score too lopsided once they switched over to the offense themselves once they managed a second-round forcebuy victory, but their hopes disappated when the Brazilian squad answered right back and picked up a dominant 16-4 win to kick off the best-of-three.
Things looked much more promising for Evil Geniuses on their own map choice of Train early on as they came out on top of forcebuy shenanigans this time. However, a massive quad-kill from KSCERATO turned a 3v5 disadvantage and helped pave the way for FURIA to gain momentum in the first half along with a 1v1 clutch from Henrique “HEN1” Teles and an ace from Yuri “yuurih” Santos in another man-down scenario.
The score tightened up once the two teams exchanged sides, with Evil Geniuses being the first to reach double digits after another good start to the half, but in the end it was all about FURIA, who just needed to break EG’s bank to regain control and close out the series in the final stretches of the map.
