StarSeries S7: event recap

NAVI.GG.BET — The champion of the season 7!

The NAVI.GG.BET team completed its performance on the StarSeries S7, winning the first champion title in 2019. In the final match, the Born to Win beat the Swedish team fnatic with a score of 3: 0 (16: 12 — Mirage; 16: 11 — Dust2; 16: 10 — Inferno). Winning the tournament, our five earned $ 250,000.

Team path to a championship title

The group stage of the championship did not start in the best way for Natus Vincere — losing the match against ViCi Gaming (1: 2). The next day,  NAVI had to fight the German team BIG. In this fight, our team appeared in a completely different shape and won a landslide victory (2: 0).

In the third round, our five met with NiP. In the run-up to the duel,  Natus Vincere had a streak of nine consecutive victories over the Swedish team, but the win streak was destined to break - the team was defeated on the opponent's map of choice (Dust2). Fortunately, the guys turned out to be stronger than the Swedes on Nuke and Mirage. The yellow-blacks did not to postpone the task of entering the playoffs stage: in the next round,  NAVI met the team  NRG and steadily won two maps!

Next, our guys had three free days to prepare for the quarterfinal match. In the first round of the playoffs, the Born to Win had a chance to take revenge on the Finnish team ENCE after losing in Katowice. And the guys took this opportunity — they beat ENCE with a score of 2: 1!

Our team decided to play the semi-finals immediately after the quarter-finals. The opponents of the Born to Win were the team Renegades. Despite the fact that it took three maps to identify the winner, Renegades did not even win 10 rounds in any of them.

After winning against  Renegades, the yellow-blacks reached the grand final of the tournament, where team  fnatic was waiting for our top five. Oddly enough, the first half of the draw of each of the maps always ended with the same score in favor of  fnatic (7: 8), but after the side switching the opponent lost the thread of the game and subsequently lost the match. As a result, three out of five maps were required for the  Natus Vincere to secure the title!

StarSeries S7 records

In addition to the championship title, the StarSeries S7 will be remembered for several remarkable achievements. First, the Born to Win broke the record for earned prize pool in a single tournament. The previous record was set at the CS: GO Asia Championships 2018 and two Majors where NAVI finished second (MLG Columbus and FACEIT Major): $ 125,000. The victory at the StarSeries S7 brought our team $ 250,000.

The second significant achievement belongs to Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev. Natus Vincere Sniper broke his personal record for the difference in KD for the tournament! At the StarSeries S7, this indicator for Sasha was + 166, and the previous best result  s1mple showed in the fifth StarSeries season (+ 161).

Main statistics of the tournament

In this championship, our players have scored high in some HLTV nominations. First of all,  s1mple performed remarkably well and won the MVP prize. Sasha became the author of the best KD difference (+ 166), showed the highest rating in the tournament (1.43), took the first place in the number of rounds with one frag or more (57.7%), ahead of everyone in the number of kills per round (0, 93), the average damage per round (92.9), the number of open frags (74) and KAST (77.0%), and also had the highest rate of successful first duels on the map (69.2%).

Also  electroNic showed his best side, and, according to the co-owner of HLTV.org, Denis could easily be eligible to be the MVP with such a game! Thus, electroNic ranks second in terms of rating (1.33), KD (+ 101), ADR (90.0) and the number of open frags (64), ranked first in the total number of headshots (182) and assists (79), and also won a decent amount of clutches - 10 (fourth place).

Of the other players of the Born to Win,  Zeus ranked third in terms of the number of rounds with support (25.1%), shared second place in the number of assists (78) and closed the top five of the best clutchers (9).

In terms of teamwork,  NAVI had the highest result in the number of purchases won by force buy after a losing a pistol round — 62.5% ( FaZe Clan is the closest pursuer with 30.0%). In addition, our guys won 22 pistol rounds out of 38 (win rate 57.9%). It is pleasing that the guys showed themselves excellently in other aspects of teamwork: they became the third team in the tournament in terms of the number of won rounds 5 in 4 (76.2%), took first place in the kills with exchanges (23.5%) and the number of rounds with the first duels won (55.7%).

The next LAN tournament for NAVI will be the US Championship — BLAST Pro Series Miami, which will be held April 12-13. As you remember, in the previous season, our top five ranked second, losing to the  Astralis in the finals (1: 2). We believe that this time NAVI will be able to take the last step and become BLAST Pro champions! #NAVINATION