ptkovsky
The ESL Pro League Season 14 is coming to the finish line. The CS: GO tournament, one of the premier online events in Valve’s eports title, is currently already in its quarterfinals stage.
Today, four of the last remaining best CS: GO teams decide who will go to the semifinals of the EPL competition.
All of the quarterfinal matches are set to be played as Bo3 series.
Na’Vi vs ENCE
Na’Vi are through to the next round of the world’s biggest and most prestigious CS: GO league, after beating their opponents, one of the best CS: GO teams from Finland — team ENCE.
The match between the one of the absolute best Ukrainian CS: GO organizations and the Finnish squad ended with the 2:0 score in favor of the CIS Counter-Strike giants.
Na’Vi quickly outplayed their Suomi opponents with the score of 16:2 and 16:5 on Ancient and Nuke, respectively.
Natus Vincere’s headliners Valeriy “B1T” Vakhovskiy and Denis “electronic” Sharipov became top fraggers, with the rating of 1.54.
electronic ended the match against the Finnish team with 41 kills and 22 deaths.
To know their opponents in the semifinals stage, s1mple and Na’Vi team waited for the second match to finish.
Heroic vs Team Liquid
In the next quarterfinal match, Danish CS: GO team Heroic faced Team Liquid, the esports organization officially based in the Netherlands.
Both teams were considered in decent shape before the event and were looking evenly matched.
During the match, the North American CS: GO roster ended up stronger on their map pick.
The first map, which was Overpass, finished with the 12:16 score in favor of Liquid. 10:5 and 2:11 in the first and second half, respectively.
The next map was Nuke, which was team Heroic pick.
The first half of the map ended up with a close score of 8:7, the second part of the game finished 8:5. The Danish team won their own map pick — 16:12.
The third and final set of the match was played on Inferno. On this map, Heroic were on another level. After the first half, the score was 12:3 in favor of the Danes, who are led by experienced in-game leader Casper “cadiaN” Moller.
Team Liquid replied in a similar manner by equalizing the score at 15:15 and taking the third and final map of the match to the overtime.
Heroic then pushed the game to an end and finally finished the map and the match in their favor with the score of 19:16.
The Danish roster defeated America’s Liquid and will contest the spot in the finals of the tournament against Natus Vincere.
Both semifinal matches of the ESL Pro League Season 14 — Natus Vincere versus Heroic, and OG vs Team Vitality start tomorrow, September 11.
Na’Vi and Intel Grand Slam opportunity
VP Pro Gaming at ESL, Michal “Carmac” Blicharz reminded the public that the Ukrainian team has an opportunity to earn additional $1,000,000 in prize pool money from the win at ESL Pro League Season 14.
The Pole’s statement is based on the fact that the Ukrainian CS: GO organization previously came victorious at three ESL-related events.
The first tournament was Intel Extreme Masters Season XIV — World Championship, the IEM-series competition, which was held in Katowice, 2020. Second event was DreamHack Masters Spring 2021, a DreamHack Masters Series tournament. Finally, the third event was another IEM, Intel Extreme Masters Season XVI — Cologne, which was organized in July 2021.
The ongoing situation means that, by the Intel Grand Slam rules, the CS: GO team from CIS only needs one more first place finish in one of the ESL Pro Tour (EPT) tournaments to win the additional title and prize money. This pressure can easily get in the players’ heads before the next matches.
If Natus Vincere lose at the EPL Season 14, they will still have two more chances of winning the Grand Slam, as long as their Katowice 2020 result is considered.
And by winning the Intel championship series, Na’Vi will match other two teams — one of the most influential CS: GO teams from Denmark, the legendary Astralis, and the US giants Team Liquid, who had an amazing run in May-July 2019, when the team managed to win 7 big tournaments in a row.