Natus Vincere lost the chance to defend their IEM Katowice championship after they lost the Quarter-Final match against Gambit. The CIS underdogs played incredibly throughout the match and secured the match after a flawless map on Train.
It started on Overpass, where the two Star players s1mple and sh1ro clashed. While s1mple delivered numerous entry kills, his Russian counterpart stole the show with three clutches during Overpass, which essentially was the key difference between the two teams. Gambit won their map pick with 16-12.
Gambit had only lost one out of the last seven maps of Train, but that didn’t stop NAVI from picking it. It quickly proved to be a bad idea. The whole Gambit roster turned up the heat on their CT-side, with all of them killing 10 or more opponents in the first half, which ended 11-4 in favor of the Russians. The second half started with a pistol win for Gambit, but like many times before in this tournament, NAVI made a force buy with success in the following round. But with such a big deficit from the first half, there was no room for mistakes for NAVI, and quickly their momentum disseapeared, and Gambit took the win and a big, big scalp and knocks out Natus Vincere from IEM Katowice.
Tomorrow we will see another CIS matchup, when Gambit faces Spirit in the Semi-Finals.
Gambit – Natus Vincere 2-0 (16-12, 16-6).
MVP: Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov – 1.45 rating / 40-23 K-D / 87.8 ADR
The highlight of the match: A sh1ro vs s1mple duel that
