FURIA and FaZe cruise through final best-of-ones

The favourites emerged victorious, with Cloud9 finding themselves ruing a confusing veto and BIG unable to test their opponents.

It was a pair of solid victories for the two favourites in the final round of best-of-ones, with FaZe taking down Cloud9 16-8 on Nuke and FURIA besting BIG 16-10 on Vertigo. That leaves FaZe and FURIA on the brink of playoff qualification with 2-1 records, whereas Cloud9 and BIG will need to win multiple best-of-threes to make it to the arena.

Cloud9 allowed Nuke through the veto, a map the lineup has never played in an official game, and there was some confusion post-match as to whether this was intentional or a mistake; Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov seemed to claim it was planned in his post-match interview, but Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen tweeted the opposite just after the game had finished.

In the other game FURIA continued their steady improvement since losing to Spirit in their opener, with BIG struggling to really get going.

Cloud9 began the unfamiliar Nuke on the defence and they started well, picking up four on the bounce before FaZe could answer. Once FaZe got up and running it was a scrappy half, both teams trading force-buy rounds until FaZe started to find repeated success with upper hits, Cloud9's unfamiliarity on the map being exposed in their inability to deal with the utility-heavy executes; this allowed FaZe to take five rounds in a row to close the half with an 8-7 lead.

Unfortunately Cloud9 offered nothing on their T side, posting single round as FaZe comfortably romped to a 16-7 victory, leaving the Russians staring down the barrel of elimination whereas FaZe can look forward to fighting for a playoff spot.

The B stream game took place on Vertigo and FURIA set about taking a convincing victory over their German counterparts. The Brazilians opened the map on the offense, and they enacted their usual fast-paced and direct gameplan, hitting the A site early repeatedly and bullying the BIG defence. Yuri "⁠yuurih⁠" Santos and Rafael "⁠saffee⁠" Costa were incredibly effective in cracking open rounds, and BIG never got settled on their defence, falling to a 3-12 deficit going into the second period.

A pistol victory gave the German squad some hope, and winning seven of the first eight rounds brought the score close, but the deficit proved too much for them to overcome as FURIA managed to find three on the bounce to close out the game 16-10 and put themselves on the brink of qualification for the playoffs.