Photo Credit: HLTV
If the close games from Day 1 wasn’t enough, Day 2 only brought more. At least half of the games went over 28 rounds with the winning team unknown until the game had ended. The first two games began quietly as mousesports and Natus Vincere took care of their opponents, HellRaisers and EnVyUs respectively. SK’s next match against FaZe was a thriller. The former major winners suffered from a lack of pistol rounds and it showed as FaZe had 5 match points at 15-10. However, several close clutch rounds by the SK team tied the score at 15 apiece and 2 rounds on either side of overtime gave them the win.
The next match between Liquid and FlipSid3 was just as close with neither team could pull away for the entirety of the match. Even at the very end, a 1 vs 3 clutch followed by a 1 vs 2 clutch by markeloff almost brought the game into overtime, except for the fact that he did not have time in the end to defuse the bomb. It was a heartbreaking moment for FlipSid3, but Liquid must’ve felt they barely pulled through by the skin of their teeth.
The close games continued as an all Scandinavian battle between North and Fnatic was the next game. North took a significant advantage on the back of their sniper, cajunb, but fnatic clawed their way back in the second half to clinch the series at 16-13.
Astralis and OpTic was the game afterwards, and the story of the day continued as both teams were neck and neck at halftime, OpTic trailing by only 1 round. The second half saw OpTic quickly pull the lead into their favor and extend it to 11-8. Device from Astralis wouldn’t fall quietly however, and his efforts helped destroy the OpTic defense and win the match for his team. Device finished with a massive 29-9 score.
The next game slowed down as GODSENT fell to Gambit 16-9 in a relatively convincing game for game for the CIS team. The final game of the day, was between two top teams, Virtus Pro and G2. The game started off with both teams trading rounds back and forth for the entirety of the first half, ending with G2 holding a slim 1 round advantage. Bodyy from G2 began the second half with a stunning 4k in the pistol round. Despite this, viewers were in for another close game as both teams fought tooth and nail for every single round. In the end, it was Virtus Pro that triumphed with a small streak of Counter-Terrorist rounds to wrench the victory 16-14 from G2.