EXTREMUM, O PLANO stay alive in cs_summit 8 lower bracket

Meanwhile, Extra Salt and paiN will face off in the fifth place decider after early eliminations.

EXTREMUM and O PLANO have advanced to the lower bracket final of cs_summit 8, defeating Extra Salt and paiN in their respective match-ups to remain alive in the tournament and guarantee themselves a greater sum of Regional Major Ranking points.

Extra Salt, who entered the tournament as one of the favourites to make a deep run alongside Liquid and FURIA, will surely be disappointed by their early elimination, having shown good form prior to the event including a runner-up finish at the FunSpark ULTI Europe Final.

The prospect of a few extra RMR points via the fifth place decider will offer little solace for Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou's side given their expectations of winning the event, and the team will have limited time to recover from the loss as they will shortly travel to Europe to compete in IEM Summer, where they will face G2 on June 3 in their opening match.

It took all three maps to decide the fate of Extra Salt, although the team kicked off the series in good form as they recovered from a 5-11 deficit on EXTREMUM's map pick, Vertigo, running away with the T side to edge out a 16-13 victory. Nuke was equally as close, although there it was Aaron "⁠AZR⁠" Ward's troops who pulled off a comeback from a 9-14 deficit to win the map in overtime, forcing a Dust2 decider.

After the narrow margins of the first two maps, Dust2 was decidedly one-sided, with EXTREMUM posting a stalwart defense to lead by five rounds at the half, before wasting little time in closing out the map following the side swap.

Meanwhile, O PLANO's woes on the T side of Nuke continued in their match against paiN - despite Vito "⁠kNgV-⁠" Giuseppe's men leading 9-6 at the end of their defensive effort, paiN entirely shut out their countrymen, securing ten rounds in a row to take the map in dominant fashion. Those same struggles on the offense did not continue on Train however, and the series was swiftly evened up as O PLANO comfortably took the map 16-10.

The double AWPs of kNgV- and Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles combined as O PLANO burst onto Dust2, leading 9-2 before paiN found their footing towards the end of the half to snag four final rounds. An early back-and-forth after the break briefly allowed paiN to pull ahead, but once the economy stabilized for O PLANO, Vinicios "⁠PKL⁠" Coelho's side were left with no openings to get back into the map, which ended 16-11.