The third day of IEM Shanghai presented the Group-B decider match between BOOT-d[S] and Gambit. While the winner of this BO-3 secured their position within the playoffs, their opponents have exited the tournament.
The first match of the series was played on Train which was the BOOT-d[S] choice. The pistol round was won by BOOT-d[S] playing from the CT-side after a bomb defuse by Bobosaur, who went on to win the subsequent round as well.
Shortly after, Gambit took a huge lead by winning 8 rounds in a row bringing the score to ‘10-3’.The Singaporeans fought hard to win the last two rounds going into halftime.
Gambit took command of the game yet again winning the second pistol round but failed to win the next seven rounds as BOOT-d[S] took the lead ‘12-11’. BOOT-d[S] reached the map point in the 28th round but failed to close their victory as the match went into overtime.
Gambit playing from the CT-side won the first two rounds as BOOT-d[S] came back to equalize the score at ‘17-17’. After the next few rounds going to-and-fro, Gambit took the game away by winning 3 consecutive rounds and settling the first match ‘22-19’ in their favor.
The second match kicked off on Nuke with Gambit winning the pistol round along with the next two rounds to take a small lead which was quickly shut down by BOOT-d[S] who went on a 4 round streak to take the lead ‘5-4’.
The Singaporean team was able to retain their lead till halftime but Gambit turned the tables around winning three rounds in a row, including the second pistol round, to take the lead ‘10-8’. From here on out it was easy riding for the CIS team as they won the match comfortably with the scoreboard reading ‘16-10’.
With this Gambit secured their spot in the playoffs winning the BO-3 series ‘2-0’ and eliminating BOOT-d[S] from IEM Shanghai 2018.
At the end of Day-3, we have the four teams who have nested their place within the playoffs. From Group-A we have NRG and Virtus.Pro while from Group-B we see TyLoo and Gambit making it through.
Day-4 will witness a clash between TyLoo and Virtus.Pro as they play to reach the finals in the first ‘Round of Four’ match. Stay tuned to see if VP can go all the way from bottom till the finals or does their winning streak falter against the Chinese giants