The main event Saturday in the Blast Premier Fall Finals quickly became a one-sided affair, as Natus Vincere (NAVI) swept Team Vitality 2-0 to advance to the event’s Grand Final.
NAVI opened with a 16-7 victory on Inferno and followed that up with a quick 16-6 win on Nuke.
All five of NAVI’s players finished with positive kills-to-deaths ratios on each map, while each of Vitality’s players finished negative on both maps.
Ukraine’s Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev was the star on the first map, finishing plus-15 with 28 kills against 13 deaths. Russia’s Denis “electronic” Sharipov was plus-11.
In Game 2, electronic paced the winners, scoring 22 kills to finish plus-9. Teammate Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy, also of Russia, had a K-D ratio of 17-10 (plus-7).
S1mple had the most kills on the day overall, with 46. Vitality was paced by France’s Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, who notched 28 kills over the two games.
Vitality will now face Astralis in the lower bracket Sunday to determine the other participant in the Grand Final later that day. That’s because Astralis defeated Heroic 2-0 Saturday.
Heroic, which had defeated Team Liquid 2-1 earlier in the day, lost to Astralis 19-15 on Mirage and 16-4 on Nuke.
Denmark players Kristian “K0nfig” Wienecke (56 kills) and Benjamin “blameF” Bremer (plus-14) paced Astralis on the day, with blameF starring in the first game (plus-9) and K0nfig taking over in the second (24 kills, plus-13).
Heroic’s Casper “cadiaN” Moller recorded 41 kills, with 27 of those coming in Game 1.
All matches in the double-elimination, $425,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament are best-of-three, including the grand final on Sunday. The winning team will earn $225,000 and a berth in the BLAST Premier World Final, scheduled for Dec. 14-19. The runner-up will receive $85,000.
Prize Pool
1st — $225,000 – TBD
2nd — $85,000 – TBD
3rd — $40,000 – TBD
4th — $25,000 – Heroic
5th-6th — $15,000 – FaZe Clan, Team Liquid
7th-8th — $10,000 – BIG, Ninjas in Pyjamas
–Field Level Media
