ESL Pro League Season 14EPL Group D: Gambit fend off Liquid for second win
The first meeting between the two teams went down to the wire.
Liquid will be left regretting a missed chance to go up 2-0 in the group after meeting the two favorites, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Gambit, as the Russian side managed to turn around the series in spectacular fashion.
Vladislav "nafany" Gorshkov's team lagged behind in the early stages of all three maps — Inferno, Vertigo, and Mirage —, but remained competitive and won the latter two to take the series 2-1.
The result sees Gambit move to the top of the standings for the time being, but with only two rounds played, nothing is even close to decided in Group D yet.
Gambit's economy was under pressure throughout their defensive half of Inferno as Jake "Stewie2K" Yip led the charge on his team's map pick. Gambit were playing catchup, but Liquid's site hits were swift and punishing, and nafany's men were struggling to deal with them. A 9-6 half time lead melted away for Liquid as the CIS side won the early rounds on the offense, Abay "HObbit" Khassenov's ridiculous triple hiding in underpass giving them the all-important pistol. However, from 11-11, Liquid stabilized with the help of Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski's and Keith "NAF" Markovic's multikils, seeing them close out the map 16-12.
Kill counts of EliGE and Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo were in double digits in no time as Liquid went 7-2 up on Vertigo and looked set to close the map in two, playing a no-respect style. Dmitry "sh1ro" Sokolov's two clutches gave Gambit a much-needed lifeline, with a 9-6 half-time score proving to be enough of a platform for nafany's team to extend their winning streak on Vertigo to 14. Sergey "Ax1Le" Rykhtorov struggled throughout the game, but came alive in the dying embers and aided the closeout in overtime, 19-16.
Liquid looked unaffected by the close loss as things moved to Mirage, where they dropped just three rounds since the rifles rolled out for a 9-6 half. The North American side extended their lead to 12-6 with a last-second frag on the defuser in the pistol, but Gambit didn't falter. The full-buy defenses were air-tight from the CIS squad, who chained 10 rounds together to complete the comeback and steal away the map (16-12), and the series.
 Gambit |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 73 - 57 | +16 | 85.2 | 74.7% | 1.29 | |
| 68 - 50 | +18 | 74.1 | 73.6% | 1.23 | |
| 63 - 63 | 0 | 78.3 | 65.9% | 1.07 | |
| 52 - 59 | -7 | 70.6 | 70.3% | 0.97 | |
| 41 - 54 | -13 | 51.6 | 74.7% | 0.83 |
 Liquid |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 67 - 62 | +5 | 86.0 | 65.9% | 1.12 | |
| 56 - 51 | +5 | 75.0 | 68.1% | 1.02 | |
| 50 - 54 | -4 | 56.5 | 71.4% | 0.93 | |
| 57 - 66 | -9 | 68.0 | 67.0% | 0.93 | |
| 53 - 66 | -13 | 64.4 | 62.6% | 0.88 |
The second day of play in Group D sees four teams tied at 1-1, with Gambit sitting on top and TeamOne being the only squad unable to secure a win yet. ESL Pro League resumes on Friday at 13:30 with a game between TeamOne and Ninjas in Pyjamas.
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Ninjas in Pyjamas
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TeamOne
Nicolai 'device' Reedtz
Mario 'malbsMd' Samayoa
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