Tag: Cologne

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CS:GO

Heroic and EG win ESL One Cologne

Heroic and Evil Geniuses are your ESL One Cologne Champions after they both took down their opposition in the EU and NA Online events. Both teams put in fantastic work and show the world why they are winning the majority of their games over the last few months.

Heroic win EU

Heroic have put in the work over the last few months of the online era. The team was approaching around 70% win ratio over the last few months before the player break, and this trajectory only carried on into Cologne. The team returned for the DreamHack Open Master Summer event where they finished second place. With the hype from that tournament, they transitioned into a successful team for Cologne.

The most impressive thing about Heroic is that they had to win the event, facing off against the likes of Fnatic in the Lower Bracket and Team Vitality in the final. What makes the event even better is they beat Team Vitality 3-0, which is really unprecedented. With this victory, Heroic become the first Danish team to win an ESL One event, granting them a historic status within Denmark.

Heroic’s map results were quite extraordinary as well. Heroic won Mirage 16-7, Inferno 16-13 and Nuke 16-9. This is incredibly exciting considering that these are some of the more popular maps in CS:GO right now, and Team Vitality has some excellent firepower and strategy as they one of the better teams in CS:GO.

However, Heroic has had some wind knocked out their sails. Heroic’s coach has been found to have abused a spectating bug during the DreamHack Masters Summer event. He was caught abusing a bug where the spectator camera was allowed to stay in a position the following round. This meant that the coach was allowed to get free information in live rounds. Because of this, ESL has banned their coach for a year, leading to him being benched from the team. This is serious allegations, and definitely one to watch as we pay closer attention to Heroic in the coming events.

ESL has ruled that Heroic, MiBR and Hardlegion abused the bug in recent tournaments.

EG win ESL One Cologne clean

On the other side of the Atlantic, Evil Geniuses beat Team Liquid 3-2 after an intense series between two rivals. Both teams ended up trading map after map, where Evil Geniuses earned their series victory on map 5. To top it off, both teams had really close map results as well. This was an incredible series, showing that North American CS:GO us getting their top tier rivalries back.

After a period of struggle for Team Liquid, they came bouncing back in the Final. Team Liquid had a slow start getting to the top of the scene after Evil Geniuses battered them in the Group Stages and Cloud 9 took a map off them in the elimination round. However, the more the tournament went on, the more Team Liquid found their footing.

Evil Geniuses found themselves taking the first map of the series on Nuke 19-16 after Team Liquid had only been battered 16-9 on Nuke by EG in their group stage encounter. Moving on, Liquid had a nice map of Vertigo with a 16-9 map win. Team Liquid dominated the T side of Vertigo, showing the world how exactly the T side can run away with the map.

Team Liquid with great gameplay on Vertigo

The theme of the series came back to haunt Team Liquid. EG would once again get a map pick, with yet another close scoreline on Inferno. This map was another 16-12 map, with Evil Geniuses taking the map, bringing them to the series point. Although, TeamLiquid was not going to be eliminated that easily. Mirage was the following map and team Liquid dominated that showing 16-6. Finally, it was time for the decider on Dust II.

Dust II went yet another 16-12 victory, with EG coming in clutch and taking the trophy. Yet again, EG takes another trophy in North America and maintain their dominance over Team Liquid. The only thing to note on this front is that EG has some work to do as this newly fired up Team Liquid roster is making it their rivalry really competitive once again.

EG are your ESL One Cologne Champions.

Stay tuned to Dartfrog for all the latest news and analysis on CS:GO and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. Image via ESL.

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CS:GO

NiP eliminate BIG from ESL One Cologne

Ninjas in Pyjamas have eliminated BIG from ESL One Cologne Online – Europe. The Swedes survive the Lower Bracker Round One, advancing further into the tournament. Meanwhile, BIG can no longer have their 2018 dream avenged as they leave the tournament losing two different matchups against Sprout and NiP.

BIG Clan are one of the biggest teams in 2020. Their journey through the online era has been great for the German side. They continuously upset some of the major teams throughout the year and even came first-place finishes by beating teams like G2 in Grand Finals. Their consistent results meant that BIG began to reign in their own era in CS:GO, becoming world number one.

Coming out of the player break, it looked like BIG was set for another great online period. BIG’s first tournament back out of the player break was in DreamHack Open Summer. BIG emerged victorious, absolutely shutting down Heroic in the finals. With that momentum, it looked like they were set to enter ESL One Cologne still on form.

However, things did not go to plan for BIG. In the first round, they were surprisingly upset 2-0 by the fellow German side, Sprout. That series was super close, with Sprout taking the first map 16:12, while the second map was only won in overtime 19:16.

How NiP eliminated BIG in the Lower Bracket

In their next series, NIP faced BIG in the Lower Bracket. BIG started off strong, winning their first map of the tournament on Vertigo 16-5. The strong BIG we expect had finally turned up. Although that was to be their last great showing of the event.

Ninjas in Pyjamas began to wake up on the second map of Nuke. The Swedes’ CT side was not a desirable showing, but their T-side began to show promise. The game became tied at 10-10, with NiP snowballing themselves to 14 before BIG caught up. With a surprise, NIP secured their 15th with an eco round. Eventually BIG settled their CT side dominance on Nuke by tying the map. The game went on for several overtimes before NiP secured the win 28-26.

syrsoN kept BIG’s dreams alive in overtime but it wasn’t enough to get the win.

Mirage was the final map for the two teams, and NiP tore through their opposition. NiP had a few weak rounds straight out of the gates, but they found themselves returning to form. By round 8, BIG needed a call out, but it was not enough to slow NiP down. NiP ended the half 11-4. Moving into the other half, BIG found some life, but NiP closed the map and series 16-7.

With that result, the world number one exists their home ground event tied for last place in Europe. ESL One Cologne is the tournament of upsets and it is only day three. The BIG upset is surely the biggest one so far, but no doubt there are more yet to come.

Stay tuned to Dartfrog for all the latest news and analysis on CS:GO and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. Image via StarLadder.