All about the quarterfinals of IEM KATOWICE

In the quarterfinals of the IEM Katowice, G2 defeated team VIRTUS.PRO, while FaZe Clan managed to beat Gambit. Both FaZe and G2 have thus entered the semi-finals. Here’s a recap of the quartefinal matches.

FaZe wins against Gambit

Faze defeated Gambit in a quite one-sided quarter final and was able to secure an IEM Katowice 2022 semifinal spot. The FaZe clan secured the victory despite all the challenges. Håvard “rain” Nygaard was infected with the coronavirus and the team had to do without him. Ropz and rain had missed most of the play-in and group stage because of the coronavirus. It was Australian player jks who stepped up to the plate for the European team.

After the win Finn “karrigan” Andersen said “That was a great performance, we all did that for rain sitting at home. We just do our best. We just focus on what’s in front of us, let Justin fee lcomfortable and I think you could see that in the performance today. We had a little bit of time to talk yesterday when we found out he might have to play, soyeah, I’m proud of the team and the mentality.”

On Dust 2 jks made his debut with a 3K in the firsst pistol round jks kicked things off for FaZe with three frags in the first pistol of Dust2 Later, Gambit tied the game at 4-4. With that, Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov’s team was completely rattled when broky and ropz’s put them up 10-5 at halftime. Gambit was able to deliver better again on Inferno.

Although they lost the first two rounds, the Russian team managed a surprising win in round three that turned the tide in their favor. Gambit briefly took an 8:3 lead, but thanks to the persistence of the Europeans, they managed to stabilize and cut the deficit to 8:7
by halftime. Then FaZe was able to win the map 16:11.

G2 defeats VIRTUS.PRO

At the same time, G2 eliminated their opponent VIRTUS.PRO in the quarterfinals. Virtus.pro was defeated by G2 in two consecutive maps, losing a close battle on Mirage 22-25 before faltering at Ancient 5-16. The opening series of the IEM Katowice playoffs began with G2 choosing Mirage. G2 got off to a good start but
once the pistol rounds started, Virtus.pro took control of the game, taking G2 apart.

The half ended with 9:6 in favor of Virtus.pro. Then G2 took a 10:9 lead, which they owed mostly to m0NESYs. The young AWPer got to 20 kills in his LAN debut before one of his teammates reached double digits. Again, the tide began to turn once the shots started falling. Virtus.pro showed strong play in the middle and end of the round to take a 13-10 lead.

Virtus.pro nearly won the final leg of Mirage after a bizarre 27th round. After G2 built a 4-3 advantage, it lost the A-side and Virtus.pro won the round. As if this map was destined to go into overtime, the teams then exchanged force buys, pushing the score to 15-15 and sending the game into overtime.

The back-and-forth on the final part of the map continued into overtime as the teams exchanged three rounds, eventually going into triple overtime. In the third and final overtime, G2 finally managed a shutout on their CT side, with Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen and m0NESY winning an almost impossible 2v5 on the B side,
ending the battle between the two teams 25-22.

The series continued on Ancient, Virtus.pro’s pick. The game went up to 10-1 in favor of G2 before the score was 3-12 at halftime. Virtus.pro won the gun in the second half, but was immediately put in its place by G2, which killed any realistic chances the CIS team had of winning on this map. Force-Buys were exchanged by both sides until Virtus.pro’s economy collapsed and G2 ended the series with a 16-5 victory.