G2 outlast Liquid to book Stage 2 spot - IEM Krakow

G2 snuck past a resilient Team Liquid to claim a spot in Stage 2 of IEM Krakow.

Team Liquid came from 2-9 down on map three to force overtime, but just missed out on what would have been a big win for the team at a time when it's much-needed.

malbsMd was the driving force on Anubis, the aforementioned third map, with 31 kills, while SunPayus struggled up against ultimate, who has been much better at this event so far. The Polish AWPer was far and away the best performer on Liquid, with Krimbo (who is a stand-in, to be fair), EliGE and siuhy all posting negative figures.

Krakow has had a few of these three map series where the first two maps are pretty one-sided, and this was another. G2 won 13-8 on Liquid's map pick, while Liquid converted an 11-1 half on G2's right back. ultimate was sensational on Inferno, seeming to be in three places at once at times and farming G2 for 23 kills.

Map three was a barnstormer, and made it a pretty fun series to watch.

s1mple’s BC.Game got ragdolled by 3DMAX in a brutal 13-3 13-4 series, with two players on BCG dropping single figure kill games.

Lucky and bodyy combined for 69 kills. BC.Game combined for 73.

Lucky’s 150.8 ADR map on Anubis was the highest rated map of the event so far, and even though s1mple held his own, his team crumbled around him. Overpass saw MUTiRiS get just one kill, with three other teammates including s1mple making five or fewer.

It was a shelacking.

s1mple almost pulled off a 1v4 + ace on Anubis, which while a lot of fun to watch, tells its own story. He was fighting on his own all map, and electroNic was the only one alive on Overpass. Overall, a pretty poor day at the office.

B8’s decision to bench headtr1ck for segukawa continues to be a baffling one, as the teenager struggled badly against paiN as B8 were forced to leave Krakow early.

They took paiN to OT on Dust 2, but vsm looked good again in his first real event with paiN, and nqz was quite clearly the better of the two AWPers on both maps as paiN picked up a pretty simple win to stay alive.

Ninjas in Pyjamas came up against a plucky Passion UA who made life difficult for them, but the firepower of cairne and xKacpersky was enough for NIP to power through.

PUA are a solid enough team , but they lack serious superstar firepower and NIP have two players with potential to be genuine tier one stars, and they were too much to deal with. It was most noticeable on Nuke, where both were unstoppable and dovetailed for 43 kills in 18 rounds.

PARIVISION once more managed a pretty strange 2-1, where they smashed Aurora on two maps and were soundly beaten on the other. The whole team had between 35 and 39 kills. Very unusual.

soulfly hasn’t really settled on this team, which means one of two things. Either that spot is a cursed chalice, or there’s not five good enough tier one Turkish players. It could genuinely be either.

FUT kicked out Legacy with a big comeback on Ancient, and honestly, we’re very thankful. They looked very impressive until the choke against 3DMAX, and FUT look far more likely to upset a big boy and make a fist of it than Legacy.