A Major is a big thing for everyone who knows at least a little about cs:go. Every pro player wants to win this tournament, and although I know that for most of the Polish cs:go fans, the best was the one from 2014, when the Polish team won, I’m not going to talk about this, now legendary tournament. I’m going to focus on the 2018 Major final that took place in Boston, because for me it was the best.
Now, I guess I need to introduce the Major to all the people not familiar with cs:go. It’s an e-sport tournament, quite a big one actually and definitely the most prestigious in the Global Offensive world. You can compare it to the Champions league, maybe the prizes aren’t as high, but for most people it’s shocking that the prize pool of the Major is 2 million dollars. There are 23 participant teams that fight to win it all, each match is played as best of three.
Finally, I can start talking about the 2018 Major’s final, so let me introduce you to the finalists, as usual there were two of them: Cloud9 and Faze Clan. The teams on their own were pretty interesting, mostly because they were very different. Faze Clan was full of cs:go stars, they had legendary players like Olofmaister, Karrigan and Rain, a brilliant sniper called Guardian and an aim god Niko. Cloud9 on the other hand consisted mostly of young talents, who were good, but nobody expected a lot from them.
The opening map was Mirage, Faze started as counter-terrorists and at first they couldn’t read through the Cloud9’s tactics and so the score was 7:1 for the Americans. Later, though they adjusted, after the change of sides they managed to barely win 14:16. The second map was Cobblestone, it started pretty much like the first one, Cloud9 quickly won the first 3 rounds and then remained in control, and so they had 12:3 lead by the end of the first half. During the second half Faze started the come back, but they did it too late and only managed to win 7 rounds. The third and final map was Inferno, it was one of the best matches in the whole history of cs:go. Cloud9 had started aggressively and as in the previous two maps, they took the lead. Later, however, Faze, who started as counter-terrorists, gave the Americans no room to operate and the half ended with a score of 7:8.
The sides changed, and now Faze started to attack. They played really well and quickly hit the match point - 15 rounds. To go to overtime, and stop Faze Clan from wining the final, Cloud9 had to win 4 rounds in a row. With the help from the cheering crowd and brilliant plays from Stewie2k they managed to get a tie. The overtime was needed, but it could not determine the winner as both the teams won 3 rounds as counter-terrorists, so the match went into the second overtime. This time though, it had a winner - it was Cloud9. The Americans won the Major final on their home turf 22:19. The underdogs, the team that nobody believed in, won the most prestigious cs:go tournament.
Antoni Michiewicz
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