Complexity defeats BetBoom Team in IEM Sydney 2023 playoffs opener

The playoffs of the IEM Sydney 2023, the first Tier 1 tournament in this new CS2 era, are underway. After two intense maps, Complexity Gaming continues to show a spectacular level of play by defeating BetBoom Team, one of the tournament’s surprises, with a score of 2-0.

As a result, Complexity advances to the Semifinals of the tournament, where they will face G2 Esports to fight for a place in the Grand Final. Meanwhile, the BetBoom Team says goodbye to Australia with an excellent taste in their mouths, demonstrating in the CS2 Tier 1 scene that there is a new team ready to fight to be at the top.

There is no doubt that this is excellent news not only for COL and its fans but for the NA community in general. Let’s remember that, in recent years, the competitive Counter-Strike scene in NA declined. However, for Complexity Gaming to kick off the CS2 era by entering the TOP 4 of IEM Sydney generates many expectations.

COL apply a clean sweep to beat BetBoom Team

We all expected this series between COL and BetBoom Team to be intense and balanced. However, the level of the North American squad is high, and thanks to their cohesion within the servers, they managed to take a comfortable 2-0 victory to complete a clean sweep against the Russian squad.

The series took place at Anubis and Ancient.

Anubis

It all started at Anubis, Complexity’s map pick, where we enjoyed a spectacular approach from the North American squad.

In the first half, Complexity, in their T Side and commanded by Johnny “JT” Theodosiou, pulled out the chest to take a resounding 9-3 victory and thus have much more confidence for the rest of the game. Then, at the change of sides, BetBoom got closer to 6-10 on the scoreboard, but this was not enough, and they ended up falling by 6-13.

.@Complexity strike first in the first ever Counter-Strike 2 stage series, taking down @BetBoomTeam 13-6 on Anubis!

Ancient is coming up next!#IEM pic.twitter.com/4EtMBn4Z1C

— Intel® Extreme Masters (@IEM) October 20, 2023

Ancient

Then, the teams moved to Ancient, the map pick of the Russian squad, where we had a back-and-forth match that had to be defined in the last rounds. However, Complexity stepped up to take the win and advance to the semifinals.

In the first half, BetBoom Team started extremely well with great play from Aleksandr “zorte” Zagodyrenko and Pavel “s1ren” Ogloblin on their T Side. However, Complexity was able to hold off some onslaught to win 5 rounds and end the first half with a tight score of 5-7 in favor of the Russians.

Then, we witnessed an extremely intense match with spectacular plays at the change of sides. We should even mention a play where s1ren was close to completing a spectacular 1v5 with USP-S. However, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski denied him the excellent play and evened the score 10-10 at the time.

The day is saved by @EliGE, but HUGE 4k from @s1ren_7! 🙏 #IEM pic.twitter.com/RLIPMWmNXj

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) October 20, 2023

In the end, Complexity Gaming stuck out their chests and managed to win 3 of the last 4 rounds to take the 13-11 victory and qualify for the semifinals of IEM Sydney 2023.

Header: ESL