SK Gaming Conquer ESL Cologne Yet Again

After a heart-racing week of CS:GO competition, it all boiled down to the grand final on Sunday between Cloud9 and SK Gaming. Both teams fought respectably and deserved to be there; here’s how the epic showdown played out. A little note, the score line wasn’t pretty for Cloud9.

Even though numbers portray a sweep, Cloud9 always had their guard up and gave it their best shot. Starting from Cobblestone, SK terrorised C9 with a 5 point lead into half time.  A second half witnessed a tremendous ace from ‘Stweie2k’, yet it wasn’t enough to change the final score of 16-9 in favour of SK.  The most notable performance was that of ‘coldzera’, who racked up 28 kills with 111.8 damage points averaged per round.

Taking the station to the second map, train, C9 pulled themselves together with a 10-5 advantage as Terrorists. SK would have none of it and absolutely shut down the lead with a disgusting comeback. Long story short, 16-12 was the score which left C9 shaking their heads in disbelief; they had just thrown away the trophy.

Inferno would be the last map of the game; where victory was valiantly contested by C9. Again, the North American squad pulled away in the first half, but this time with a 9-1 score due to winning all of their rounds consecutively following the pistol round. The lead vaporised, and everyone was silent at the 14-14 tie. SK Gaming closed things out with a final count of 16-14 to bag the trophy and the paired prize money.

It’s no doubt that SK Gaming are the top dogs as we enter the Krakow Major. 2017 looks like it’s their year. However, the Brazilian squad has been penalised with a reduce in prize money for a violation during a timeout, which definitely takes away some legitimacy in their victory.

In the second half of the second map, Train, SK asked for a technical timeout and the stream went into commercials. Shortly, the action continued with the teams at 10-10, nothing out of the ordinary…. But with nobody paying attention, the whole entire SK lineup was communicating using in-game team chat. They definitely gained the advantage going into the round, thus the penalty was given and prize taken to be redistributed over the 15 other teams. It’s a shame to hear this after such a close game.