Team Liquid defeated FURIA 3-1 at the cs_summit eight grand finals yesterday, winning the first Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournament for North America in 2021.
The Brazilian team didn’t stand a chance in the best-of-five series as Liquid dominated the first two maps (16-7 on Mirage and 16-11 on Nuke) and nearly completed the sweep on Inferno (14-16). Jake “Stewie2K” Yip and company didn’t let FURIA gain any momentum in the fourth map and answered back with a crushing 16-5 win on Mirage to secure 1600 RMR points towards the PGL Stockholm Major 2021 and earn $17,000.
Keith “NAF” Markovic and Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski were the heavy hitters for Liquid, finishing the series with an 80-53 K/D and 81-69 K/D, respectively.
Although Liquid breezed past FURIA in the grand final, it wasn’t an easy tournament for them by any means. The North Americans scrapped a win against Bad New Bears in the opening match and lost to Extra Salt in the second. After the tough start, Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo handed some of his IGL duties to Stewie2K and the team’s overall performance improved considerably. They never lost a series again, taking down EXTREMUM, paiN Gaming, and FURIA twice throughout the tournament.
Cs_summit eight served as the first RMR tournament for North America in 2021 and there will be two more opportunities to gather points towards the PGL Stockholm Major, with the final one currently planned to be played on LAN. With this victory, Liquid are now the third-placed team in the North America RMR leaderboard, behind EXTREMUM and the leader FURIA.
Here’s how the North America RMR leaderboard looks like after cs_summit eight.
- FURIA – 1980 RMR points
- EXTREMUM – 1880 RMR points
- Liquid – 1840 RMR points
- Evil Geniuses – 1310 RMR points
- O PLANO – 1300 RMR points
- Extra Salt – 1200 RMR points
- paiN – 1100 RMR points
- Bad News Bears – 950 RMR points
