NAVI and FURIA take comfortable victories

The favourites found themselves posting convincing wins, with Natus Vincere edging closer to qualification and FURIA avoiding elimination games.

The two favourites found themselves victorious in this round of matches, with Natus Vincere besting BIG 16-8 and FURIA defeating Liquid 16-9, both games taking place on Ancient.

FURIA were comfortably the better side against Liquid, the NA squad struggling to put up the CT side required on a map like Ancient. It was a similar story on the A stream, where Natus Vincere's eight-round T half was more than enough to put BIG to bed and put themselves on the brink of qualification.

Ancient was the field of play for the A stream battle, with Natus Vincere starting on the T side. The map began as a back-and-forth brawl, the rounds close and often coming down to retakes, with Natus Vincere coming out on top considering the CT-sided nature of the map. Despite some high impact rounds from Florian "⁠syrsoN⁠" Rische and Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa BIG couldn't post a convincing defence, and Natus Vincere took a slender 8-7 lead into the second half.

BIG never found their footing on their offense, and they were repeatedly bullied by an ever more confident Natus Vincere side, with the CIS squad constantly taking duels and winning them; as if to add insult to injury, Natus Vincere closed the game with a successful 2v5 from Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov, 16-8 the final score.

The other game also took place on Ancient, and the Brazilians sought to make quick work of their NA counterparts. FURIA opened on the defence with a big streak of rounds, Liquid struggling to gain any traction in attack, the score getting to 8-1 before the North Americans woke up; four of the last six rounds gave Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella and co. something to work with going into the second period.

Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski came up with a 4k on a retake to win the pistol and give his team hope, however Yuri "⁠yuurih⁠" Santos answered back with an AK in the second round to break back, and FURIA ran with that momentum, getting themselves up to 14 rounds before an answer came. An answer did come in the form of three rounds on the bounce, but ultimately Liquid didn't really get going in this map, and FURIA found the two needed to earn themselves a 16-9 victory.