forZe, CR4ZY through to DreamHack Open Winter semi-finals

FORZE took down FURIA in a three-map series to secure their place in the semi-finals in Jönköping, while CR4ZY crushed SJ dominantly to progress to the next round.

After dispatching of Marskalk in the elimination match earlier in the day, FORZE looked to continue their winning ways against FURIA in the Group A decider encounter. Regardless of narrowly falling short on their own map pick of Inferno at 14-16, the Russians recomposed and took the fight straight to FURIA on Nuke, where a phenomenal 1v5 ace clutch from Andrey "⁠Jerry⁠" Mekhryakov on the second half pistol put FORZE in the driver’s seat. FURIA were able to claw their way back to force overtime, but FORZE buckled down to edge out the Brazilians despite FURIA’s Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato dropping an incredible 42 kills in a spectacular map.

With the series levelled and little to separate the two teams, the matchup headed to Mirage for the decider, where FORZE stepped their performance up a gear to storm to a 13-2 lead at the halfway mark. FURIA managed to string together a few rounds on the defence, but the score difference proved insurmountable as FORZE soon closed out the map 16-7 to win the series and set up a semi-final matchup against GODSENT.

ottoNd ran riot against SJ with a 1.81 rating

CR4ZY's path to the semi-final proved to be more straightforward as they put their matchup against SJ to bed in just two maps, with the European mixture crushing the Finns 16-2 on the opener, Dust2 as Luka "⁠emi⁠" Vuković and Rokas "⁠EspiranTo⁠" Milasauskas stole the show.

The utter dominance from emi and his squad continued through to Nuke, with Otto "⁠ottoNd⁠" Sihvo spearheading the CR4ZY assault on the second map. In a blink of an eye, the result from the opening map had been emulated as CR4ZY shut down SJ swiftly, 16-2, to secure their place in the next round.

The schedule for the final day of DreamHack Open Winter is the following:

10:00 - GODSENT vs. FORZE
13:00 - Tricked vs. CR4ZY
17:00 - Grand final