by Vitality took home the title and $64,000 in prize money on Sunday after beating Team Liquid to win cs_summit 4.
Featuring six of the world’s best CS: GO esports teams and a $150,000 prize pool, the tournament promised to be an exciting one to watch and it managed to live up to expectations.
The group stage ended as expected, with Ghost Gaming and Renegades in the bottom two places. Ghost are simply not of the same level as the other teams that participated in cs_summit 4 and Renegades had to play with a stand-in, which greatly hindered their performance.
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On the other side, Team Vitality finished the group in first place with a 3-2-0 record and 24 points – six points above Team Liquid, who entered the tournament as favourites. Still, the French team had it all to do.
The semi-finals featured Team Vitality vs ENCE and Team Liquid vs NRG Sports. Liquid managed to defeat NRG 2-0, while the match between Vitality and ENCE proved to be closer than expected. Vitality lost the first map 14-16 but managed to get back up with a convincing 16-8 result on Overpass and a close yet impressive 19-15 win in the deciding map, Inferno.
That left us with the two finalists: Team Liquid, who we all expected to see in the grand finals; and Team Vitality, who had an impressive run behind them and the hardest task right in front of them.
The grand finals began on Nuke, which was the map where Vitality celebrated a convincing 16-3 win against Team Liquid in the group stage. While we did not expect to see a repeat, the start of the map surely caused TL some flashbacks to day two of the tournament.
It did not take long for Vitality to get a 5-1 lead, which soon turned into a 15-4 advantage. Trailing by 11 points, Liquid managed to hold on for five more rounds, but in the end it was Team Vitality who secured a 16-9 win.
The second map was Overpass, which looked far better from Team Liquid’s perspective. The NA team started well and got out to a 3-0 lead, but they once again crumbled under pressure and let Vitality run away with it. Before the home side realised what was happening, it was already half-time and they were 11-4 down.
The second half saw Liquid rising and slowly catching up to Vitality, but it was too late and too little. Team Vitality finished the series with a 16-13 victory and their fourth map win against Team Liquid for the tournament.
The cs_summit 4 MVP award went to Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut, who came out of the finals with an impressive 1.44 HLTV rating.
