GamerLegion and Apeks advance to the semifinals of BLAST.tv Paris Major

The quarterfinals of BLAST.tv Paris Major are over and some of the winners are underdog teams. In the case of Heroic and Team Vitality, everyone expected them to qualify for the semifinals. But few people could have predicted that GamerLegion and Apeks will do as well as they’ve done.

In the case of GamerLegion, their quarterfinals opponent was Monte. Apeks had a much harder match to win, because they needed to win against Team Liquid. In both matches, the supposed underdog won surprisingly easily. In turn, this should give both Heroic and Vitality easy access to the Grand Final. But maybe we’ll see more upsets in the semis.

GamerLegion vs. Monte

GamerLegion did incredibly well in this match, thanks in part to the spectacular performance of Mihai “iM” Ivan, who had one of the best series of his entire career. The Romanian player finished with a score of 51 K – 28 D and a rating 2.0 of 1.78.

This allowed GamerLegion to win both maps with ease: 10-16 on Mirage and 3-16 on Overpass. Unfortunately for Monte, Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev was not in his usual form and had a very poor score: 25 – 36.

Because he’s the IGL, nobody will blame him for not getting more kills. But the tactics and overall strategy used by his team are largely his decisions.

If we take a step back and look at Monte’s tournament result, it’s safe to say that the team did much better than everyone expected. They may not like the fact that they lost against a relatively easy opponent, but they should be satisfied with finishing in the top eight at a CS:GO Major.

Liquid vs. Apeks

On both maps, Apeks pretty much secured their victory in the first half, which ended with a score of 4-11 in their favor. Despite Mareks “YEKINDAR” Galinskis’ best efforts, Apeks did an excellent job and managed to neutralize Liquid’s key players really well.

Looking at the unusual moves they made throughout the match, it’s obvious that they carefully studied Liquid’s playstyle and figured out how each player makes decisions on every map.

Apeks were always a step ahead of Liquid and made it feel like they could read their minds.

The best players on the server were Damjan “kyxsan” Stoilkovski and YEKINDAR. Part of the reason why Apeks won was Tim “nawwk” Jonasson’s brilliant clutches.

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