Fnatic pull off upset against Heroic in Pinnacle Cup Championship opener

KRIMZ was on point today.
Photo via Fnatic

The newly formed Fnatic lineup with Nico “nicoodoz” Tamjidi, Fredrik “roeJ” Jørgensen, and stand-in Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg have surprised just about everyone today after beating Heroic, the highest-ranked team of the $250,000 Pinnacle Cup Championship, in the opening round.

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This win is a total upset, not only because Fnatic are playing with three new players, but also because the organization gave the in-game leadership duties to William “mezii” Merriman, who is unproven in the role, following the departure of Alex McMeekin.

Heroic and Fnatic played their best-of-one series on Inferno, and the international team conquered a hard-fought 16-14 victory thanks to strong individual performances from nicoodoz and the veteran Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson. The new AWPer finished the game with a 20-14 K/D ratio, while KRIMZ finished with a 22-17 K/D.

Mezii said in a post-match interview with HLTV that Heroic are one of the hardest teams to play because of their playstyle, which involves a lot of stack gambling on the CT side. “For us, since we made the changes, it has always been about communication,” the new captain said.

“I think when you play a team like that, when your communication is really good, that’s how you beat them. I think we played super calm and were able to react well against them,” he added.

There are eight CS:GO teams split into two groups of four for the group stage of the Pinnacle Cup Championship. The group winner will advance to the upper bracket of playoffs, while the runners-up go to the lower bracket. The $250,000 event will run from June 8 to 11 and also features BIG, MIBR, Astralis, the Party Astronauts lineup of Evil Geniuses, Imperial, and Finest.


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Author
Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.