Evil Geniuses (EG) bested fnatic 2- 1 in the upper bracket final of StarSeries i-League Season 8 to pave their way to the Grand Finals.
The first map was Mirage. Jesper “JW” Wecksell opened up the series with a brilliant ace but Evil Geniuses replied with a force buy, sadly enough EG couldn’t hold their momentum as Robin “flusha” Rönnquist and JW replied with 5 kills on the CT force back. Tsvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov’s landed a triple kill which enabled EG to grab their second round on the map, but that was short lived as fnatic claimed a 13-2 lead over EG and asserted their dominance. After the switch fnatic bested EG in a 2v4 clutch situation in the pistol round and edged them out with a score of 16-2.
The second map of the day was Dust 2. Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz went big with a triple kill at round start allowing the CT side of EG to get a head start into the second map. fnatic went strong with rifles and turned the tides with a 2v2 clutch on the A site by Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson and Maikil “Golden” Selim. In conclusion, fnatic took the first half with a 9-6 lead. After the switch EG took the pistol round and went head strong into the following rounds and were unchallenged till their progress was shut down by a quad kill from KRIMZ. Sadly, to the dismay of fnatic fans EG destroyed fnatic after the round switch and won with a scoreline of 16-10.
The final map of the day was Inferno. The initial rounds went in favor of fnatic as they took a massive 5-0 lead, their road to victory was only challenged by CeRq as he came online with his AWP, but the Swede offensive was too strong for the North Americans as fnatic escalated to a 7-2 lead. EG barely managed to get their footing in the later rounds of the first half and managed to climb their way back up, only losing the first half by a single round deficit. After the switch, EG took the lead with a pistol round win and soon gathered momentum to push the scoreboard 14-9 in their favor. As EG clawed for match point, flusha managed to answer back with a 1v2 clutch, but he only managed to delay they inevitable. In the end, EG outclassed the Swedes on their T-side and took the third map 16-13.
The simultaneous map 2 and map 3 wins allowed Evil Geniuses to take the series in their favor and go 2-1 against fnatic to win their spot in the Grand Finals of the StarSeries i-League Season 8.
