Cover Image Courtesy: ESL Counter-Strike | Thumbnail Image Courtesy: ESL Counter-Strike
The final day of ESL One: New York 2019 witnessed the Danish team Astralis struggle against a confident Evil Geniuses. The best-of-five series was won by the NA squad without much of a hassle, they stuck to their game and made sure that the match does not go to the final game.
Evil Genuises - Beginners Luck?
The newly formed EG CS:GO squad which came into existence after signing the line-up of NRG Esports, went on to win the very first tournament that they participated in. The boys in blue couldn’t go on an undefeated streak as they dropped one map against Astralis, but the fact that they won a total of five games out of six played against Astralis is a huge achievement in itself.
The finale started off with a banger performance by EG which witnessed tarik go bonkers as he secured 19 kills by himself and finished with a KDA of +8. The usual, Brehze and CeRq combo was not the highlight for the side on this instance, and still, they went on to beat Astralis in a dominating fashion with the scoreboard reading ‘16-3’.
This was followed by a victory on their own map pick, Dust 2. Though Astralis did give a good fight this time around, it wasn’t enough as EG’s prowess on the map was certainly worth an applaud.
Back on another map picked by Astralis, Train was the map where EG faltered, as their undefeated streak came to a halt. But they did not drop the map easily, taking the game into double overtime and making Astralis work really hard for this victory.
EG did not let the match go down to the fifth map, as they hit Astralis pretty hard on Nuke. The Danes who at one time were the undeniable kings of this map did not have that same impact, as EG ran away with a comfortable victory. Securing the series ‘3-1’ in their favour.
Brehze went on to be crowned as the MVP for the tournament. As he held a rating of 1.25 in the finale against Astralis and an overall rating of 1.29 in the tournament. He has been phenomenal throughout the series, taking control of the situations and leading his team to multiple victories.
With this, the NA organization went on to hoist the trophy in front of their home crowd as they win their first tournament under the EG banner, becoming the champions of New York. EG with this victory has joined in on the race to win the third season of Intel Grand Slam.
With Liquid attaining victory at IEM Chicago and now EG winning here in New York, the race has started for the prestigious Grand Slam title, the rules for which have changed, making it a bit more challenging to claim it.
