The first quarter-finals of the ESL One Cologne 2016 was between Virtus.Pro and Astralis. The first map that was decided was Overpass.
The first round started with Astralis starting on the T-side and securing the first pistol round. However, they couldn’ tstop ‘byali’ from taking a triple kill in the second round and secured that round that was followed by ‘snax’ clutching an important 1v2 for his team and giving Virtus.pro 9-1 lead in the map. Later on ‘karrigan’ helped his team to come back in the game and got few important rounds. After getting one more round, Astralis struggle continued and they trailed 3-12 at halftime.
The second half was rather surprising as Astralis won the second half pistol round and then won the first seven rounds to make the score 12-10. ‘device’ tried his best and even got his team to the match point but ‘pashabiceps’s quad kill made Virtus.pro comeback in the game once again and taking the game into overtime. Virtus.pro eventually stopped the comeback and closed the map 19-17.
The second map of the game was Train and things started pretty well for Astralis as they won the first pistol round of the map that was followed by two anti-Eco win. However, Virtus.pro replied back and won the buy round by picking some early picks. Despite all the hard work put by Virtus.pro, Astralis grabbed the first half with the scoreline of 11-4. Yet again Astralis won the pistol round and leaded the map 13-4.
Despite all this Virtus.pro didn’t lose hope and won the gun round with the help of ‘Taz’s triple kill. Later on something happened that was unexpected, Virtus.pro made a huge comeback in the game and somehow managed to take the score to 14-11. Virtus.pro took the match into overtime and dominated the danish team in the first half of the overtime by winning all the three rounds in the first half and then closing the map and eliminating Astralis and becoming the first semi-finalists of the ESL One Cologne 2016.
