ENCE are the winners of IEM Dallas 2023

ENCE have done the impossible. They participated in an S-tier CS:GO tournament filled to the brim with strong teams like Heroic, G2 Esports, and FaZe Clan, and somehow managed to win despite not being a top 10 team in the global rankings.

The event was full of upsets and low-probability coincidences. Teams that were obliterated by their opponents in the group stage, such as MOUZ, overcame those same opponents in the playoffs. Maps that were supposed to be won with ease by one of the sides, ended up going the distance and being won in overtime by the other side.

For ENCE, the odds looked slim on paper before the tournament began, but the team played well from the start and actually won group B of IEM Dallas.

ENCE’s run at IEM Dallas

ENCE started the tournament with a match against Complexity, which was very one-sided: 16-7 on Nuke. Alvaro “SunPayus” Garcia finished with a K-D score of 24-10 and a rating 2.0 of 1.80. Thanks to this individual performance, his team didn’t have to do much to win.

The next match was played against FaZe Clan and it was supposed to be very difficult. But ENCE won the first map, Anubis, 7-16, and then pretty much ended FaZe Clan’s hopes in the first half of the second map (4-11). The final score on Overpass ended up being quite close though: 13-16.

Once again, SunPayus proved to be a lot stronger than everyone else and finished with a K-D score of 45-25.

In the upper bracket Final, ENCE had to play against Astralis, who were having themselves a great run. ENCE lost the first map (12-16 on Overpass) but won the other two (19-17 on Nuke and 16-12 on Mirage). For the third time at this tournament, SunPayus was exceptional: 68-47.

The man of the match wasn’t him though. Nicolai “device” Reedtz had a monstrous performance and finished with 94-51.

In the playoffs, ENCE had to defeat FaZe Clan for the second time in the semifinals. But this time, the match was much harder. FaZe won the first map, Mirage, with a score of 8-16. ENCE’s comeback was absolutely epic: 16-6 on Anubis and 31-28 on Ancient.

In the Grand Final, MOUZ played poorly, despite everything they had done until that point. This allowed ENCE to win very quickly: 9-16 on Mirage and 10-16 on Nuke.

Header: ENCE