forZe & Syman through to CIS Minor upper bracket final

The first day of the playoffs at the CIS Minor has come to an end, with forZe and Syman making it through to the upper bracket final after taking down Spirit and DreamEaters, respectively.

forZe against Spirit were up first, kicking off the opening upper bracket semi-final on Inferno, with Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev clutching a 1v2 to get his team an early advantage. forZe replied in the second round with a forcebuy win, however, stringing four together before Spirit found their footing on the defense.

Bogdan "⁠xsepower⁠" Chernikov's side stopped their opponents' streak at five in a row and went on to trade blows with them, eventually reaching the second half with just a one-round deficit following a 1v3 clutch in the last round from the aforementioned AWPer.

Dmitriy "⁠facecrack⁠" Alekseyev added another 1v2 clutch to forZe's tally in the second pistol, which allowed them to reach 13 rounds quickly, and although Spirit managed to respond with three in a row, a failed bomb plant attempt in the last seconds gave Andrey "⁠Jerry⁠" Mekhryakov & co. the 14th and soon two more to end the opening map 16-12.

Overpass followed, with forZe coming out of an early back-and-forth forcebuy battle on the CT side, which helped them rack up an 8-2 lead early on. Spirit recovered with four in a row to salvage the half, which ended up making the difference in the second half.

There, forZe once again started the half better, but a great defense led by Artem "⁠iDISBALANCE⁠" Egorov saw Spirit claw their way back into contention, forcing overtime. However, sdy's squad couldn't complete the comeback, losing the series 0-2.

The second semi-final between Syman and DreamEaters also began on Inferno, which turned out extremely streaky. The latter team didn't have much of a say in the first nine rounds, with only the pistol and the following antieco going their way, while some key multikills from Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy and Sanzhar "⁠neaLaN⁠" Iskhakov gave Syman a 7-2 lead on the T side.

DreamEaters tightened up the defence to salvage the half with five out of the last six rounds and carried momentum over to the offense in the second half, where Syman could only secure one more round while the team led by Svyatoslav "⁠svyat⁠" Dovbakh clinched the first map at 16-9.

The second map, Dust2, was quickly looking to progress in much of the same way, as it was Syman once again taking off to an early 6-2 lead but ended up struggling to break through the defense late in the half, with DreamEaters switching over with an 8-7 lead. Although DreamEaters were the first to reach double digits, this time they encountered much more resistance from Maksim "⁠t0rick⁠" Zaikin's squad in the late stages of the map, being unable to convert a 14-10 lead to end up in overtime.

Despite DreamEaters putting together a perfect T side half thanks to clutch play from Igor "⁠Forester⁠" Bezotecheskiy, one set wasn't enough, as Syman responded with one of their own, with Perfecto stepping up in an all-important 1v2 en route to second overtime. Although the second set looked set for another trade of perfect T halves, Syman came out on top in the very last round on the back of a 1v2 clutch from Ramazan "⁠Ramz1kBO$$⁠" Bashizov on B to force the decider.

It came down to Train, where things returned to a rather streaky nature, with Nicolas "⁠Keoz⁠" Dgus starting it off with a flashy USP quad-kill to give his team an early lead. It didn't last long, as DreamEaters were dominant in the first few gunrounds, but a return to success late in the half saw Syman switch over with a one-round advantage.

Their streak continued as they went up 12-7 before DreamEaters equalized things again five rounds later, and the two teams kept going back and forth until they reached overtime, with the last two rounds featuring another late 1v2 from Ramz1kBO$$ and a low forcebuy victory by the opposing side. The overtime saw Syman make short work of the first half on the T side, giving up just three kills over the course of the three rounds, and finish off the series when Ramz1kBO$$ closed out the decider with a triple-kill at 19-16, 2-1.