StarLadder Regional Minor Championship CISCIS Minor day one recap
The first day of the CIS Minor hosted by StarLadder has come to a close, with Arcade and Gambit winning crucial winners matches (2-1 over Method and 2-0 over Rebels respectively) to advance to the playoffs.
Eight teams from the CIS region competed at the Victoria Olimp Hotel in Minsk today in the CIS Minor, the second of four regional Valve-endorsed Minors which all dole out $50,000 in prize money and a coveted invitation to the MLG Columbus Major offline qualifier taking place February 26-28.
The first opening match of Group A played out in a predictable fashion as the Russian team Method (who were previously known as PiTER) managed to outduel Sergey "Fox" Stolyarov's Fluffy Gangsters on de_overpass with a 16-10 score.
mou played a spectacular series against Rebels
The second Group A opening match was a narrowly contested game on de_cache between Nikolay "mir" Bityukov & co. of Arcade and the lesser known Russian team Quest. Quest managed to put up a good fight, with Evgeny "fenvicious" Mitsik in particular standing out for his performance, but ultimately fell to Arcade who won the map 16-13.
The first opening match of Group B saw the CIS team Rebels completely destroy Binary Dragons on de_cbble with a final score of 16-3. Belarussian Sergey "spaz" Skrypchik and Russian newcomer Denis "electroNic" Sharipov put in strong performances.
The second opening match of Group B was a similar blowout as Mihail "Dosia" Stolyarov's Gambit team took down the Ukrainian eXplosive lineup 16-4 on de_cache with Kazakh Rustem "mou" Telepov the most impressive for Gambit.
It then came time for the first winners match of the CIS Minor in a Group A face-off between Method and Arcade, the two teams expected to make it to the winners match in the first place.
Although Method totally trumped Arcade on de_train with a 16-6 score, Arcade surprised the Group A favourites with two closely fought victories on the next two maps as they won de_dust2 16-11 and de_mirage 16-10 to advance 2-1 into the playoffs. The most impactful player of the series was Arcade's mir.
ArcadeK - D
+/-
ADR
KAST
Rating
64 - 49
+15
-
-
1.17
53 - 45
+8
-
-
1.06
51 - 49
+2
-
-
0.95
51 - 52
-1
-
-
0.95
46 - 48
-2
-
-
0.88
MethodK - D
+/-
ADR
KAST
Rating
62 - 55
+7
-
-
1.05
49 - 48
+1
-
-
1.01
46 - 52
-6
-
-
0.91
47 - 58
-11
-
-
0.82
38 - 52
-14
-
-
0.77
The Group B winners match finished with a 2-0 score but the series between Gambit and Rebels was debatably even more hotly contested than the Group A game.
After tying on de_cbble with mirrored 10-5 halves, Gambit and Rebels took the map to the long mile by going all the way into a quadrule, MR5 overtime that saw the game eventually end in Gambit's favour with a 36-32 scoreline.
de_inferno was equally tense where, following a commanding 9-6 T-half on de_inferno, Roman "CyberFocus" Dergach and his team nearly did the same amount of defense breakdown to Dauren "AdreN" Kystaubayev & co. but ultimately fell just short as Gambit took the map 16-14 and the series 2-0.
Both Gambit's mou and Rebels' 17-year-old electroNic had phenomenal performances in the series as the stats below show.
GambitK - D
+/-
ADR
KAST
Rating
94 - 60
+34
-
-
1.43
72 - 65
+7
-
-
1.07
72 - 75
-3
-
-
0.98
59 - 69
-10
-
-
0.82
57 - 70
-13
-
-
0.79
RebelsK - D
+/-
ADR
KAST
Rating
100 - 71
+29
-
-
1.34
65 - 65
0
-
-
0.99
56 - 71
-15
-
-
0.83
57 - 72
-15
-
-
0.83
61 - 75
-14
-
-
0.79
Day two action at the CIS Minor begins with the best-of-one elimination matches with the first being the Group B clash between eXplosive and Binary Dragons at 14:00 and the second being the Group A game between Fluffy Gangsters and Quest at 15:15 .
The action can be followed live via StarLadder's Russian stream and English stream.
Confused about lineups and who's who at the event? We wrote a special preview with each team's backstory which can be found here.
stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter
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