OG brush aside Virtus.pro 2-0 to kick Group B off with a victory

Not a single member of the CIS squad posted above a 1.00 rating in the one-sided affair.

OG opened their ESL Pro League campaign with a victory, defeating Virtus.pro convincingly in a 2-0 series. Nikolaj "⁠niko⁠" Kristensen was the star performer for the European squad, posting a 1.50 rating across the series, with AWPer Mateusz "⁠mantuu⁠" Wilczewski just behind him.

mantuu in the post-match interview pinpointed OG's ability to keep Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis quiet on the Terrorist side as a key reason for their victory: "We were expecting every single aggressive peak he tried to do [...] once you cancel out YEKINDAR it does get fairly easy." These comments seem justified in light of Virtus.pro managing a measly nine T rounds across both maps.

The series opened with OG's pick of Mirage and they started things off strongly, winning their T pistol and converting to go 3-0 up. Virtus.pro grabbed themselves a few rounds but couldn't stop OG getting to a 7-3 lead, mostly through Virtus.pro giving up too much space to the boys in blue and struggling on retakes. Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali and co. started to warm up, winning a half buy and racking up three more in a row before dropping the final round to end the half 8-7 in OG's favour.

After a back-and-forth start to the Virtus.pro T side brought us to a 10-10 score, Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen and his boys took the game by the scruff of the neck, particularly mantuu who was finding success both in entry duels and clutches. Virtus.pro could only muster a single further round as the map ended 16-11 to OG. The CIS squad simply couldn't come back from a broken economy after the see-saw start to the half prevented anyone building up a bank.

If Virtus.pro were hoping to get their own pick of Dust2 off to a good start to build some momentum in this series, they were sorely disappointed. The CIS squad simply couldn't get their T side going, falling to a 2-9 deficit off the back of a series of failed B takes; niko and Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså were an absolutely monstrous pairing on that site, finishing the half with over 100 ADR each. Eventually Virtus.pro did cobble together a few rounds to end the half 10-5.

Losing the CT pistol gave Virtus.pro a monumental uphill battle that they simply couldn't manage. Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan was incredibly impressive for OG with the entries on T side, and they could count on mantuu for a fantastic 1v2 clutch at 13-6 to ensure the half was a simple affair.