Cloud9 oust fnatic from Gamers8

fnatic are the first team to bite the dust at the cutthroat tournament.

Cloud9 have passed their first test at the $1 million Gamers8 tournament taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Russian-Kazakh squad beat fnatic 2-0 (Vertigo 16-14, Anubis 16-7) to move on to the quarter-finals of the merciless single-elimination bracket.

Cloud9 will next play against the winner of one of the marquee matchups of the first round between Liquid and ENCE, on Friday at 16:30 .

Date	Matches
Gamers8 2023
18/08/2023	Cloud9 17:10 ENCE	Match

fnatic were in with a chance on Vertigo, a map they picked despite losing it to Cloud9 in a series victory back in the IEM Cologne group stage last month, where the Russian side were forced to use Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov instead of Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov.

Cloud9 however came out on top of the back-and-forth affair, preventing a fnatic comeback from 1-6 and 6-11 spearheaded by Aurélien "⁠afro⁠" Drapier and Fredrik "⁠roeJ⁠" Jørgensen. The Dane's crucial openings around A ramp on the T side went in vain due to crucial impact from Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov, whose quad kill and triple late in the game helped tip the scales in his team's favor.

A chaotic first half followed on Anubis where the majority of rounds ended in clutch situations. Cloud9 came out on top of most of them and just narrowly missed out on winning three other1v3 attempts to keep fnatic's economy in check and secure a 9-6 half. A near-flawless CT performance full of aggressive setups and flash plays followed to lock down the series.

"We're happy when everyone picks Vertigo against us, they think that me and Perfecto didn't play it, but we practiced it with NAVI, also, so I have a bit of experience there," Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov said about the opening map to James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks in an interview on the stage.