forZe eliminate Virtus.pro in Moscow

Virtus.pro's debut tournament ended early as they suffered a 2-1 defeat to FORZE in the group B elimination match at EPICENTER.

The two CIS sides, ranked #15 and #16 in the world, faced off in a match for survival at EPICENTER 2019, with Virtus.pro (formerly AVANGAR), having the upper hand in the matchup historically. In this game, FORZE dominated on Train (16-3) and the T half of Inferno (12-3), looking to close out the series swiftly, but Virtus.pro came back with an impressive 13-1 T-side of their own to force Vertigo. There, however, FORZE managed to stabilize and take the series, 16-10. FORZE will play another game today, a rematch against Evil Geniuses, to decide the seeding going into the six-team playoffs.

Winning the pistol round and surviving the following force buy gave FORZE the early lead on the CT side of Train, Virtus.pro's map pick, with Evgenii "⁠FL1T⁠" Lebedev looking impeccable early on, pushing his team to an 8-0 lead. The Kazakh side then finally managed to get a round, breaking into the B bombsite, but Dmitriy "⁠facecrack⁠" Alekseyev's triple at the start of the next one, locking down T-mid, saw FORZE regain control shortly.

As the score was 10-1, Virtus.pro opened up the A bombsite with pistols, getting up to three rounds on the offense, but they weren't able to close out the half strongly, ending 12-3 down. FORZE juked out Virtus.pro on the pistol to take the A bombsite with little resistance, and then, just like in the first half, edged out an anti-force from Virtus.pro. At that point, it was just a matter of time before they closed it out, 16-3.

Things didn't look up for Virtus.pro on Inferno, as losing a third pistol round in a row set them on the back foot from the start of their campaign on the defensive side of the map. Despite Sanjar "⁠SANJI⁠" Kuliev's multi-kills, FORZE powered to a massive lead, 11-0 on the Terrorist side, with Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov unable to find a kill for that whole run (0-9 K-D).

Virtus.pro finally stopped the rot by winning a round after taking Banana control, and mustered three out of the last four rounds in the half to give themselves a lifeline on Inferno. Winning the pistol and claiming the first rifle round, while cleaning up against the low-buys, resulted in five-round run by Virtus.pro on the T side, bringing back the game slowly but surely (12-8).

An A apartments explosion worked out in the next round and continued Virtus.pro's streak, with FORZE struggling to pick up the necessary kills to lock down their approaches. In the end, Virtus.pro managed a near-perfect, 13-1 half, completing the comeback (16-13) to force map 3, Vertigo.

Dauren "⁠AdreN⁠" Kystaubayev's triple with the Deagle gave Virtus.pro the force-buy victory, but FORZE didn't falter like they did on the defensive side of Inferno, fighting back in the rifle rounds to take a 5-4 lead. Virtus.pro still looked better overall on the offense, edging into the lead before the switch, 8-7.

It seemed like that advantage was going to be extended after the second pistol, but FL1T recovered the round for his team with a sneaky A site flank. FORZE got on a five-round winning streak before Virtus.pro resolved a 2v3 situation in their favor. Virtus.pro managed to follow the round up, putting the Russian side in a tough economic situation, but were unable to capitalize on it, seeing FORZE take control of the proceeding once again, closing out the map 16-10.