After Group A’s initial round played out, it was time for the first two matches in Group B, which saw two Ancients played as Gambit ended fnatic‘s unbeaten streak with smooya and Virtus.pro came out on top of a close encounter with a Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer-less ENCE.
Friday, December 3
13:30fnatic vs.
ENCE (LB round 1)
16:45Gambit vs.
Virtus.pro (UB semi-finals)
All four teams will return to play again on Friday, in an all-CIS battle in the upper bracket for a spot in the playoffs and an elimination series between Alex “ALEX” McMeekin‘s team and ENCE.
Gambit and VP will face off in an all-CIS battle on Friday
It was a difficult opening match for the new fnatic side, playing their first tier-one event with their new British AWPer and facing off against a scary opponent in Gambit, who were firing on all cylinders once they found their footing on the Terrorist side.
The Swedish-British mixture struck first on the back of a pistol round quad-kill from ALEX, but the half quickly got away from them once Gambit won a couple of unfavorable situations on A. Taking control over the economy on the back of a few clutches, the CIS squad dominated the rest of the half, and with Abay “Hobbit” Khasenov adding another 1v1 to his name in the second pistol, it was just a matter of time before the favorites closed it out.
Read more
Snappi ruled out for IEM Winter, Maden steps in for ENCE
ENCE, in the meantime, did the best out of the cards they were dealt, after Snappi was sidelined from the event due to contracting COVID-19, but still faltered in their opening match against Virtus.pro.
With the last-minute stand-in Pavle “Maden” Bošković proving a pivotal player as he kept finding openings on the Terrorist side, the European team made life very difficult for Virtus.pro. After a close first half, it looked as if Dzhami “Jame” Ali‘s side would finally rally to a decisive ending when they stringed six together shortly after switching sides, but they were met with a resilient ENCE that pulled off four big retakes to take it to overtime.
There, Virtus.pro pulled it over the finish line after Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis and Jame kickstarted the team back into life with a triple-kill each.
PlatoAi. Web3 Reimagined. Data Intelligence Amplified.
Click here to access.
