Cloud9 no match to ENCE at Gamers8

In a landslide victory, ENCE went from down 0-5 on the opening map to end the series with 16-7 and 16-6 scores on Ancient and Anubis.

ENCE are through to the semi-finals at the Gamers8 tournament taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, following a masterclass performance in a series victory against Cloud9.

Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer & co. set up a mouth-watering semi-final rematch against HEROIC from the IEM Cologne Group A upper bracket final, in which ENCE just narrowly prevailed.

Date	Matches
Gamers8 2023
19/08/2023	HEROIC 16:30 ENCE	Match

Widely touted as one of the most stacked lineups following the additions of Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy, Cloud9 were no match to ENCE across the quarter-final series. Their individuals were nowhere to be seen, while ENCE had everyone firing on all cylinders.

"At Cologne even though we got to the final it was a rough tournament individually for multiple of us, we weren't really hitting our shots," Snappi said after the match to James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks. "In this game we played really good individually, all of my players were on point and that was the biggest thing today."

For no one was it truer than for Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz, who ahead of the game spoke about a confidence issue he has been working on following a sub-par performance at IEM Cologne.

The Israeli ended the quarter-final series on top of the board with 44-25 score, 108 ADR, and a 1.50 rating as the top fragger on both maps, and is now the highest-rated player of the tournament.

All his teammates put in their contributions as well, with high-impact plays that kept Cloud9 far out of contention for a victory on either Ancient or Anubis.