SK Gaming Reclaims World’s Top Spot with EPICENTER 2017 Win
A set of Counter-Strike champions have returned to the top spot in the world, as they survived one of the year’s toughest team pools in St. Petersburg, Russia.
SK Gaming have won EPICENTER 2017 with a victory over Virtus pro, a team who had just suffered the greatest slump of their careers. The grand finals of the week-long event ended with a 3-2 series map score.
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VP came out strong at the start of the series, winning Mirage 16-10 after a solid defensive side, giving them an early first half lead. SK then dominated map two Inferno, finishing the second half with a 7-0 shutout as Terrorists. Filip “NEO” Kubski had the best kill-death ratio of the first two maps at 29-12 with a 120.8 average damage per round on Mirage.
With the series tied 1-1, Virtus Pro were set to take a 2-1 lead until SK mounted an incredible comeback on Train. After being down 12-3 at halftime, they forced overtime and ultimately won the map 19-16. Marcelo “coldzera” David put on a commanding performance on Train and finished with 33 kills.
On map four Cache, VP staged their own comeback in the second half after facing a 9-6 deficit. They held SK to only two rounds late in the game and closed out the map on top 16-12 after a hectic three-vs-five clutch in the final round.
The final map of the tournament, Cobblestone, was close all the way until the end. Both teams kept winning rounds because of their fragile economies, but a defensive quadruple kill from boltz allowed SK to force overtime.
In round 36, SK won a two-vs-five to push the game into double overtime. The Brazilians then swept double overtime 4-0 on offense to end the map 22-18 and close out the grand finals 3-2. Coldzera was easily the series MVP with an average of 26 kills per map in the six-hour Counter-Strike marathon.
SK Gaming won $250,000 in their title run at EPICENTER 2017. Despite playing with a stand-in and minimal practice, they showed resilience and proved that they’re still the best team in CS:GO at the moment.
Counter-Strike, esports, SK Gaming, EPICENTER 2017, Virtus pro, tournament, champions