VP defeat OpTic, advance to semis

The Group A Decider match of the CEVO Gfinity Professional Season 9 Finals saw Canadian-American-Spanish team OpTic advanced from an elimination match against Splyce to battle Virtus.pro, with the Polish team having lost to HellRaisers in the group's winners' match.

William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba picked up a USP 3K on his team's CT-side pistol start on Mirage to help give OpTic an early entrance into the game. However, in typical brute force VP fashion, Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas and his team forced up with pistols and scored enough Deagle and tec9 kills to dismantle OpTic's anti-eco and equalised the score at 1-1.

With all of VP's players playing aggressive and confident Counter-Strike, the Polish team surged ahead on the first map, moving all the way up to a 12-1 Terrorist side on Mirage before RUSH and Oscar "⁠mixwell⁠" Cañellas were able to pull off some defensive success and give the majority Canadian team another round; the half ultimately finished 12-3 for VP.

Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz and mixwell both contributed to OpTic winning the second pistolround of the map, pitching in P2K and tec9 kills to give OpTic a chance of entering back into the game.

However, with the score standing at 12-6 for VP, a two-versus-two situation saw Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski get a Scout kill through triple box on the A-site of Mirage as Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic was attempting to plant and finish off the final OpTic player. From this point onward, Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski and co. had control of the rest of the game's momentum and economy and won the map 16-6.

Inferno was the second map of the series, with its appearance likely marking one of the last couple times that the map will be played competitively as it has been officially removed from the Active Duty map-pool by Valve.

The first half of the map certainly was a tribute to Inferno's extreme CT-sidedness at times as TaZ and the rest of his team outaimed, outflanked, and outplayed OpTic on all sides, though mixwell tried valiantly to bring his team into the half and OpTic did somehow roll through the first half finish line with three rounds, with the score once again 12-3 for VP.

A very strange second pistolround saw VP plant on the A-site and a four-versus-four retake situation begin but it was the Polish team who emerged the victor and seriously made bleak the hope of OpTic clawing their way back into the match.

Desperate attempts with a broken economy by OpTic came to no avail as the score moved ahead to 15-3, but mixwell did manage to keep hope alive with a one-versus-three round that included outthinking VP's players.

mixwell in fact continued to keep his team alive for a few more rounds, positioning himself well and scoring multikills multiple times, but an eventual VP take of B-site did wipe out the OpTic team and gave them the map 16-8.

CEVO Gfinity Professional Season 9 FinalsBest of 3

OpTic

Matchpage

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29th April 2016

Virtus.pro

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Mirage

16

8

Inferno

16

Virtus.pro	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Filip 'NEO' KubskiNEO	44 - 28	+16	111.2	1.69
Janusz 'Snax' PogorzelskiSnax	42 - 20	+22	80.3	1.39
Jarosław 'pashaBiceps' JarząbkowskipashaBiceps	38 - 28	+10	88.7	1.31
Wiktor 'TaZ' WojtasTaZ	37 - 27	+10	77.1	1.22
Paweł 'byali' Bielińskibyali	27 - 28	-1	73.0	1.06

OpTic	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Oscar 'mixwell' Cañellasmixwell	40 - 31	+9	92.4	1.30
Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguzstanislaw	29 - 40	-11	62.6	0.79
William 'RUSH' WierzbaRUSH	27 - 41	-14	73.2	0.77
Keith 'NAF' MarkovicNAF	22 - 37	-15	61.1	0.77
Damian 'daps' Steeledaps	12 - 39	-27	49.0	0.49

Tomorrow will be reserved strictly for the two semifinals of the CEVO Gfinity Season 9 finals, with both games being in a best-of-five format. The first match kicks off at 13:00 as HellRaisers will take on SK.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter