Space Soldiers beat SK 2-0 at ESL One Belo Horizonte

The Turkish side secured their first win at the tournament with strong T-sides on both maps, beating SK 2-0 (Cache 16-13, Inferno 16-11).

The first map of the series was Cache, where Space Soldiers were boasting a 20-map winning streak before taking on SK. And things were looking grim at the start, as Space Soldiers won the pistol, but lost the following round to SK's last-second push on A.

Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo and co. then took the lead, 3-1, before Space Soldiers managed to lock them out of B to add their first rifle round to the board. And that would be all from the Turkish side for quite a while, as SK was dictating the pace of the game and picking off the defenders left and right with ease.

As the score was 9-2, Space Soldiers got into a good position to win their third, but FalleN showed up with a big 1v3 clutch to advance his team's lead. Space Soldiers still managed to add two more rounds before the end of the half (11-4), which proved crucial, as the second half pistol went their way and saw them slowly close the gap on the T side.

After cleaning up the anti-ecos, Space Soldiers pulled off a B site execute and than Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli managed a 1v1 clutch that saw them tie the score at 11-11. The end of the map was a scrappy afair, but the Turkish team continued to bully SK's B-site defense and close dout the map in the end, 16-13.

On Inferno, MAJ3R flanked SK on their pistol round B push and picked off a couple of unaware Brazilians which yielded Space Soldiers the round, and they built on it to get a 5-1 lead. Then, a scrappy pistol-armor round from SK came down to a 1v2, which Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David clutched with just a Deagle.

coldzera was SK's main man throughout the first half, displaying his Deagle skills a few rounds later once again and helping his team reach a respectable 9-6 half-time score. After the switch, SK locked down the A site to win the pistol, shortly tieing up the score at 9-9. For the next couple of rounds, no team was able to string round together, which troubled the defenders, SK, more, and they opted for a force-buy with an AWP on FalleN at 11-11.

The sniper didn't even come into play in the following round as Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş and co. broke into B and took the lead once again. From there on, SK was struggling with their economy, finally affording a full buy as the score was 15-11, but still couldn't hold back Space Soldiers who went on to take the map 16-11 and go 2-0 for the series.