IEM Katowice Major: NAVI.GG.BET — in the playoffs!

NAVI.GG.BET advances to the next stage of the tournament!

After defeating AVANGAR,  NAVI.GG.BET advanced to the playoffs of IEM Katowice Major and secured the status of “Legend” for the next tournament — StarLadder Major 2019!

On the first game day, best of 1 matches were played,  Natus Vincere faced G2 and Team Vitality. If the fate of the match against the  shox's team, by and large, was sealed in the first half of the match, then with the other French five it took three series of extra rounds to determine the winner.

NAVI beat G2 on Inferno (16: 7), and in the match against Team Vitality the game took place on Mirage and the score reached a two-digit mark on both sides (25:22). Successful completion of the first game day gave our top five an opportunity to get into the team pool with 2-0 statistics and stay one step away from fulfilling the intermediate goal — getting into the playoffs.

In the third round,  NAVI had to fight with one of the most uncomfortable opponents of the past year —  Team Liquid. In 2018, the teams played three best of 3's, and in all of them the American five won unconditionally. Unfortunately, this time our guys also failed to break the resistance of  Team Liquid (0 : 2).

Thus, in the next round, the fans were to witness the CIS derby between NAVI and AVANGAR. In this fight, the guys were not going to give up the slack and confidently outplayed the rivals on Dust2 (16 : 6) and Train (16 : 11). As a result, the group stage of the championship ended with 3-1 score for  NAVI and guaranteed themselves the status of "Legends" until the next Major in Katowice.

It is worth noting that  Oleksandr «s1mple» Kostyliev with rating 1.31 became one of the best players not only as part of the Born to Win but also among all participants of the tournament (fourth place). Sasha also had the second best result of 1 + kills per round (65.7%) and was the leader in the total number of frags with AWP (74).

Congratulations to our five with an admirable performance in the group stage and an exit into the playoffs! The final stage of the tournament will take place on February 28 — March 3, and NAVI will get to know their opponent at the end of Sunday's matches. We hope that our players will be able to effectively use the remaining time until Thursday and get ready for the quarterfinal match! #NAVINATION