Vitality cruise into IEM Dallas semis to set up first ZywOo vs donk clash

The opening playoff match in Dallas was as one-sided as it gets.

Vitality are through to the semi-finals of IEM Dallas 2024 with a dominant 2-0 victory over HEROIC. Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski's troops still put up some resistance on Nuke, where they managed to recover from a shaky start, but the game ran away from them after half-time and they were made light work of in the rest of the series.

With this victory, Vitality have set up a semi-final bout against Spirit in a must-watch series for any CS fan: for the first time, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets will cross swords in an official match.

Date	Matches
IEM Dallas 2024
01/06/2024	Spirit 20:00 Vitality	Match

"We've never faced them, only in practice," ZywOo said after the match. "We're going to play our game. Nothing more."

HEROIC got off to a slow start on their map pick of Nuke, mustering only three frags during the first four rounds as Vitality took control of proceedings from the get-go, led by an inspired Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire.

Any round that HEROIC won was immediately countered by their opponents, but a streak of three rounds towards the end of the half saw the Danish team bring the deficit down to two rounds, with Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck posting an impressive 4-0 opening duel record and 130 ADR.

Vitality added to their lead after the side switch with a comfortable pistol round in which they had a 5vs2 advantage. HEROIC still attempted a comeback once they had money in the bank, but with apEX maintaining his momentum from the first half, there was no stopping Vitality.

HEROIC's day went from bad to worse once Dust2 kicked off. Things looked promising at first as they won the second round — courtesy of a trio of frags by sjuush — after losing the pistol, but they could muster one more round in the rest of the half as Vitality ran amok on the offense.

More misery was to come for HEROIC as Vitality picked up the pistol round in dominant fashion with a fast B retake. The rest of the half was a mere formality as Vitality quickly picked up two rounds to wrap up the game.