Ninjas in Pyjamas beat Evil Geniuses 2-1 today at StarSeries i-League season eight in Group B’s upper bracket semifinals.
With this win, the Ninjas broke EG’s three-month win streak on two CS:GO maps, Inferno and Dust II. Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg and crew were clearly the better team on both maps today, winning 16-4 twice.
EG had a perfect record on Dust II and Inferno over the past three months. The North Americans were on a 12-win streak and nine-win streak, respectively, until today.
F0rest showed off his best form on Dust II and delivered 28 kills in just 20 rounds. These numbers combined for a rare 2.01 rating.
NiP had the lead on the second map, Nuke, but EG recovered in the end and won it.
The series went to Inferno and the Ninjas dominated from the start, winning six rounds in a row twice during their T-side. This time, nobody had a superstar performance like f0rest on Dust II. Instead, Nicolas “Plopski” Zamora and Fredrik “REZ” Sterner got 19 frags each.
This is a surprising result for NiP, who have had a bad year in terms of results so far. The Swedes will have their best chance to advance to the playoffs if they defeat G2 or AVANGAR on Thursday, Oct. 24.
As for EG, they’ll have more work to do if they want to make a deep run in this tournament. Now, the North Americans have to defeat more opponents to clinch a spot in the playoffs.
EG can’t afford to be eliminated in the early stages of this event. This is their best chance to become the top team in the world in HLTV’s rankings because Astralis and Liquid both skipped this event.
EG will play against Heroic or Natus Vincere tomorrow at 12:30pm CT with their tournament life on the line.
