Cloud9 eliminate Evil Geniuses to continue recovery run in Rio

Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov's men are just one win away from advancing to the Legends Stage.

Cloud9 have returned to their expected level of form at the IEM Rio Major, keeping themselves alive in their second elimination series by seeing off Evil Geniuses from the Challengers Stage. The Russian side had their tournament run get off to a rocky start following overtime losses to fnatic and Grayhound, strong performances from Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov proving to not be enough to net wins in the best-of-ones.

The 21-year-old remained a key factor in helping Cloud9 net their first win over Imperial on Tuesday, and maintained his stellar form against Sanzhar "⁠neaLaN⁠" Iskhakov's men, this time joined by both Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov en route to a swift 2-0 victory. Cloud9 will need to maintain their trajectory from here and have all their players show up on the server in their final match of the Challengers Stage, where they are likely to face GamerLegion for a spot among the top 16.

Evil Geniuses, meanwhile, will head home with their heads in hands after a rather lackluster showing in Rio, where they barely edged out a win over IHC in their opening best-of-one before dropping consecutive matches to MOUZ, 9z, and Cloud9.

Cloud9 got off to a solid start on Dust2, converting a pistol victory into a 3-0 start on the T side before a response came in from Evil Geniuses. The North American-European combine began to climb back and managed to even the score at 4-4 following a pair of retakes, but were unable to gain the lead of the map at any point as Cloud9 swiftly regained control. HObbit and sh1ro secured multi-frags in critical rounds to keep their side well in the lead, and EG only managed to add one more round to their tally before the half was brought to an end.

Evil Geniuses had little respite following the side swap as sh1ro remained a thorn in their side, another pistol round win for Cloud9 allowing the Russian team to immediately run away with the momentum of the map. There was no opportunity to fight back for EG and they quickly found themselves on the losing end of things, with C9 taking the victory in dominant fashion, 16-5.

Overpass was equally as dominant by Cloud9, Ax1Le in particular stepping up with a strong individual performance after having a particularly lackluster first set of matches in the tournament. A three-round lead to kick things off by Evil Geniuses was quickly left by the wayside as Cloud9 assumed firm control of the proceedings, putting up an almost entirely impenetrable CT-side for the rest of the half and conceding just one round en route to an 11-4 lead.

Cloud9 quickly moved up to 14-4 lead following the pistol round in the second half, putting themselves on the brink of a swift victory. EG dug deep and made a valiant effort to come back from the deficit, but were stopped before they could make things to close for comfort as Cloud9 attained match point before HObbit clutched a 1vs3 to take things over the line.