Winners and losers at PGL Major Krakow 2017

PGL Major Krakow ended last Sunday with Gambit lifting the trophy after beating Immortals in the final round. The article will go through the event and look at the winners and losers of this tournament.

The Major started with a ‘semi-random’ (half random) Swiss format, and brought a lot of surprises. Starting with FaZe, the second-ranked team in the world, had to pack a suitcase to leave with only three matches, accompanied by Natus Vincere.

G2 and Cloud9, the world’s 4th and 5th place teams, also failed to make it to the playoffs, with two surprises from the two seeded teams BIG and Gambit.

The playoffs begin with an early final between SK and Astralis. But the match tilted to one side with Astralis winning 2-0. Gambit and Virtus.pro surpassed fnatic and North by just two maps. Meanwhile, Immortals have to work harder to get past the BIG.

In the semi-finals, Gambit passed the ‘Astralis challenge’ in all 3 intense maps, while Immortals disabled Virtus.pro in front of the host fan base from Poland (VP). In the final match of the tournament, Immortals took the lead by winning 16-4 on Cobblestone. Gambit responded with a victory on the Train map before finishing off Immortal at Inferno.

Winner

Gambit

There’s no way we can ignore Major’s new king, Gambit. After winning several minor events, Gambit surprised and stood at the top of the biggest tournament on the planet. They practiced continuously, each member having a total of more than 100 hours of practice in the two weeks before the tournament. Gambit’s journey has been quite interesting as they have lost almost all of their online and scrims matches before the Major, said Abay “HObbit” Khasenov. Now, they have a great performance at the Major.

The sweep of G2 with the score of 16-6 in the second round of the Swiss format surprised many people. But it was not until Gambit defeated fnatic in the quarterfinals, returning the feud that Gambit had lost to the Swedish team at ESL One Cologne 2016 and the ELEAGUE Major that Gambit really caught the attention of the community. of the dark horse of the tournament.

Must mention Gambit about their ability to escape pressure against Astralis on Train map. At 13-12, it was a round that proved their prowess at predicting the pace of the game in Krakow, when they needed to play aggressive, when to play smarter. They had an all-round performance throughout the season, with the biggest surprise coming from Rustem “mou” Telepov. The 25-year-old has too many mistakes to be considered a top AWPer, but in Krakow, he surpassed himself, scoring an average rating of 1.14 and a total of 116 kills by AWP, losing only to Henrique “HEN1’s 129. “Tele.com.

We must celebrate with Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko, I promise I won’t stop until I win a Major , and also Dauren “AdreN” Kystaubayev. The veteran player is at the peak of his career at 27 years old, with almost 12 years since he first made it to the international finals, against Team 3D at WCG 2005. There’s definitely something special about it. about Gambit. Let’s hope Na`Vi’s roster change doesn’t cancel that out.

Immortals

Getting to the finals of a Major isn’t easy, but doing it in the first place at a Major would be impressive. The fairy tale of Immortals is much more interesting if you remember earlier this month, when this Brazilian team got through the Main Qualifer gap, at a time when they were at one point on the brink of being eliminated by GODSENT. .

Perhaps that memorable comeback changed Immortals. It must be said that Immortals’ journey to the playoffs was not difficult, taking down all 3 teams that did not make it through the group stage, but that doubt was cleared when they disabled Virtus.pro in front of a Polish audience.

Vito “kNgV-” Giuseppe played very well with a double AWP setup at Immortals, and HEN1 improved significantly as the tournament progressed. Lucas “LUCAS1” Teles too, he had his moments to shine, unfortunately he couldn’t do it in the last two maps of the finals, where the team struggled to chase Gambit.

Stepping out of the shadow of SK is a huge success for Immortals. Their future is pretty bright, but these players need to work harder to avoid being emotionally affected during matches. The Immortals’ passion makes them one of the most exciting teams to watch. But coach “Rafael “zakk” Fernandes has pointed out, that leads to instability, and is also one of their biggest weaknesses.

Virtus.pro

Going into this tournament, no one really knows what to expect from Virtus.pro. When they were in lousy form, making people doubt VP’s future. But when the event ended, the Polish players smiled as they proved they weren’t over and would keep fighting – even if they were completely ‘out’ by Immortals in the semifinals.

Perhaps more important than their results at Krakow was the fact that the VP players found a way to ‘bootcamp’ ahead of the event and worked as a team to overcome the difficulties. Reaching the semi-finals at this Major gave VP another chance, a huge opportunity for a team that looked hopeless before the event.

With Janusz “Snax” Pogorzelski taking the position of ingame leader (captain), we can see the importance of Paweł “byali” Bieliński and Jarosław “pashaBiceps” Jarząbkowski, once they have risen and made their mark. . It’s still too early to say that Virtus.pro has truly come out of their low, but this Major has given them a breather. Like the old video games, VP has now lost a life. Wonder how many lives they have left in this game?

BIG

BIG was the surprise factor of the Major, finishing in the top 8 in its first tournament. This is a great success for a new team that was only formed at the beginning of the year.

Public opinion will think that BIG is just “lucky”, surviving the Swiss group stage with only Inferno and taking advantage of the “crouch jump” error when facing FaZe and Cloud9. However, the way they defeated SK in the next game and forced Immortals to fight hard to win the semi-finals proved that there is much more hidden in BIG. Not only the only Inferno map, Fatih “gob b” Dayik has a lot of things prepared before this event.

The 30-year-old ‘gob b’ is praised for his ability to read opponents and find new strategies, and he has truly helped veteran IGLs become ‘useful’ once again. Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz and Johannes “nex” Maget both have a respectable track record, along with Kevin “keev” Bartholomäus who is equally adept with his AWP, even in suffocating situations.

There are many positive things that BIG has reaped from this Major. They are currently ranked 14th in the world and are clearly strong contenders for the events of the second half of this year.

Loser

FaZe

Ahead of the PGL Major Krakow, everyone has great expectations from FaZe, who have made it to the finals four times in a row until two weeks before the event in Poland. FaZe only finished 3-4 at ESL One Cologne after losing to SK in the semi-finals.

Things fell apart in Poland, when the European team lost 0-3 and had to leave early, losing to BIG, mousesports, and FlipSid3, all three teams were not favored to make it through the group stage – and actually 2 out of 3 didn’t make it.

Underperforming players are easy to spot and that could also be the main reason for FaZe’s disappointing campaign. Only 3 out of 5 really stood out at the Major – Nikola “NiKo” Kovač, Håvard “rain” Nygaard, and Aleksi “allu” Jalli put in a good effort. But karrigan and Fabien “kioShiMa” Fiey both failed, they only got ratings of 0.62 and 0.61.

Another possibility is that FaZe simply looked down on the group stage and thought they didn’t need to play A-quality, as demonstrated by their unnecessary pushing and unwarranted gunfights.

What this tournament means for the European team is still unclear. After all, this is the first time FaZe has had to leave in the group stage. After the 3-week break ends, we will know what their conclusion is: can the bug be fixed or the decision to change the roster again.

Na`Vi

After disappointing results at DreamHack Open Tours and ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals, Na`Vi looks to have bounced back thanks to results in Cologne, where they took down G2 in the quarter-finals before losing narrowly to Cloud9 .

However, at the PGL Major, Natus Vincere could only win against FlipSid3 in the Swiss group stage, and lose to G2, Immortals and fnatic; ending three consecutive years of the Legend title.

Na`Vi believes that changes are necessary after a long year of struggling with the current roster, but there is no word yet on who will leave.

As seized said ,it’s gonna be changes in the team

— Sasha (@s1mpleO) 20 July 2017

Seized, forced to take the helm after Valve’s Coach law was introduced. He was considered the best candidate at the time, although at that time there were very few people who could take on the role of IGL, provided that this person spoke Russian. We’ll have an answer soon, with Na`Vi only three weeks left to get a resolution before ESL Pro League begins to lock up the roster.

G2

The French team is expected to at least make it to the playoffs at PGL Major Krakow, but they have to wait much longer to be able to claim the Legends title.

G2 won only two intense matches against two teams that also failed to make it to the playoffs (16-14 against Natus Vincere and 19-17 against Cloud9) while losing convincingly to three teams Gambit, Astralis and fnatic.

As Richard “shox” Papillon mentioned in a recent interview, G2 simply couldn’t show their level of play at the Major, they were forced to go back to their desks and come back with a fresh spirit. batch after the holiday is over.

Source: HLTV.org