Vitality defeat North 2-0; advance to DreamHack Masters Dallas playoffs

In the group A lower-bracket final Vitality dealt with North, taking them down on Nuke (16-10) and Mirage (16-11). The French side has, therefore, secured a spot in the quarter-finals of DreamHack Masters Dallas.

North had a tremendous start to the CT side of their map pick, Nuke, winning seven straight rounds while Vitality only mustered five kills and a single bomb plant. The deadlock was finally broken by the Frenchmen with an A push and followed up by a successful outer take, getting them back into the match.

As the score was 7-3, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire turned around a 2v4 situation which proved crucial to Vitality breaking the bank of their opponent. The score was on the verge of being equalized when Jakob "⁠JUGi⁠" Hansen woke up and brought in the last two rounds of the half with AWP multikills.

Winning the second pistol and shutting down the first-round A site execute allowed Vitality to tie the score at 9-9 early into their CT half, and they didn't have issues extending that further as Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså and co. couldn't find openings onto the bombsites with their quick hits. Nine rounds straight went the way of Vitality (15-9) before their opponents got their first on the offense, but ZywOo replied with a triple in the next round, closing out the map.

An 0-2 start after losing the pistol was quickly turned around by North on the CT side of Mirage, with Markus "⁠Kjaerbye⁠" Kjærbye doing the brunt of the work as they took a 5-2 lead. After some back-and-forth, Vitality won a crucial force buy where Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt Deaged down two, getting the Frenchmen to a one round deficit (6-5), but North then replied with a force of their own, moving up to eight rounds before the switch.

Vitality shut down North's pistol round perfectly, taking down all five opponents before they even encroached on the A bombsite, without losing a single member. North were back on track swiftly, though, with Kjaerbye coming up clutch in back-to-back after plants (10-9).

North's following attempts fell short, Vitality picking them off before they approached the sites and reaching a 14-10 lead. An explosion onto the A bombsite then worked out for valde and co., but the followups weren't as successful and saw the Danish side eliminated, losing 16-11 on Mirage and 2-0 for the series.