NAVI Survives 71-Round Thriller Against AGO at ESL Pro League S15

Natus Vincere (NAVI) just played a marathon of a map on Mirage against AGO in their opening match of the ESL Pro League Season 15. Not many would have expected the second map to go into seven overtime, following a dominating '16-1' victory by NAVI over AGO in the first map Dust 2.

Both the sides were unrelenting, while AGO wanted to win the map to survive and take the series down to a decider on Inferno, NAVI wanted to claim the series and move ahead with a clean '2-0' victory in their opening match.

Which they were able to accomplish, as the game on Mirage ended with a '37-34' scoreline, the 71 round game being one of the longest ever on LAN in the history of Counter-Strike.

NAVI plays one of the longest maps ever on LAN in the history of CS:GO to defeat AGO

Natus Vincere was missing its shotcaller, Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov, who was replaced by the NAVI Junior (academy CS:GO team) player Danyyl "headtr1ck" Valitov, for time being until Boombl4 feels healthy once again.

Despite the handicap, NAVI showcased a strong performance on its opening map of the game as it took down AGO with a '16-1' scoreline on their map pick Dust 2.

Both NAVI veterans, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Denis "electronic" Sharipov showcased top form as they secured 21 frags each to attain an HLTV rating of 2.13 and 2.05 respectively. Even the 17-year-old rifler, headtr1ck, was able to hold his own with an ADR (Average Damage per Round) of 78.6 and K/D of +5.

Starting off on such a good note, everybody was expecting another quick game on Mirage which was NAVI's own map pick. But little did they know that this game was about to turn into a seven overtime marathon, with the two teams playing a total of 71 rounds.

Though NAVI managed to secure the map with a '37-34' scoreline, it was a Herculean task for the Ukrainian side to walk away with a clean '2-0' victory against AGO.

NAVI's star player s1mple ended up taking a total of 65 kills, achieving an HLTV rating of 1.34 and a K/D of +21. Four other players ended up taking more than 50 frags in this historic game which is going down as one of the longest CS:GO maps ever played on LAN.

A few other similar tier-one CS:GO games that come to mind are,

• Cloud9 vs NAVI at ESL One Cologne 2017 where the two teams played 66 rounds on Train before NAVI won by a '34-32' score.

• ENVY vs NIP at CCS Kick-Off Season Finals where the two teams played 69 rounds on Dust 2 before NIP won by a '36-33' score.

NAVI did not show any nerves and kept their cool to come out on top without dropping a map today. It will be interesting to see how the CIS lineup performs against other teams like Astralis, Complexity Gaming, Evil Geniuses, and Heroic.