After eight weeks of regular season play, it's now time to get down to business for the ECS Season 3 Finals. Day 1 saw SK Gaming continue its hot streak by securing an early playoff berth, while Cloud9 came out as the top seed in its group with some surprisingly strong play against some of Counter-Strike's best in London.
SK Dominates Group A
Coming off a commanding run at DreamHack Summer last weekend in Sweden that culminated in a 2-1 championship win over Fnatic, SK doesn't seem to have missed a step whatsoever. Starting the day off against G2 Esports, an epic clash between two giants was expected to take place, as G2 is coming off a win of its own during the Season 5 Finals of the ESL Pro League. Instead, SK jumped out the gate with a massive 12-3 first half on Cache that eventually turned into a 16-7 win to send G2 to the lower bracket of Group A.
With FaZe Clan having easily dispatched OpTic Gaming in its opening match, the table was set for SK and FaZe to square off. The map for this tilt was Train, which was once SK's bread and butter, but has since diminished in strength. Still, SK is no slouch and quickly jumped out to a 10-4 lead at the half. While FaZe took a few more rounds in the second half, SK's Fernando "fer" Alvarenga kept pushing his team along with a stellar 26/14 KD (kills/deaths) to give his team a 16-8 victory. The win puts SK right into yet another semifinals, while FaZe will have to battle it out in the lower bracket for a shot at the playoffs.
Cloud9 Shocks Group B
North America is back. After Team Liquid placed in the top four at the ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals, Cloud9 is now through to the semifinals with a strong performance in Group B. C9 opened up the group against Fnatic, and got off to a nice 8-2 start in the first half of Train. While the Swedes brought things to a 9-6 scoreline by the end of the first half, C9 came out firing in the second half to take the map handily by a score of 16-8.
Up against Astralis, widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, team in all of CS:GO, C9 certainly had its work cut out. Things looked very grim at the outset, as Astralis made its case as the best team with an 8-0 start to Mirage. C9 brought it to a respectable 10-5 deficit at the half, but the second half is where things really starting heating up for the Americans. C9 took the pistol round and went on to take a 15-14 lead to put the Danes on the defensive. Astralis did manage to force overtime, but C9 remain composed and took all four rounds of overtime to take a 19-15 win to punch its ticket into the semifinals.
With the group winners decided, the rest of the teams in each group will battle it out to fill up the remaining spots in the playoffs. The day will kick off at 6:15 a.m. ET with OpTic taking on G2, followed by Fnatic facing Team Liquid.