Liquid reverse sweep NIP to stay alive in Rotterdam
After being sent down to the elimination bracket of BLAST Open Rotterdam by Spirit, Liquid stayed alive against NIP. Their reverse sweep marks Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa's first victory with the team, and the second of five matches needed to secure Liquid in the Americas VRS rankings.
Keith "NAF" Markovic opened Nuke with a dualies 4K, but Rasmus "sjuush" Beck replied with a TEC-9 multikill of his own. Liquid was otherwise pedestrian on the defensive side, only winning two more rounds to make the score 3-9 at halftime. Kacper "xKacpersky" Gabara replicated NAF's opening gambit in the second pistol round to put this one out of reach from Liquid.
Mirage was far more contested, despite NIP's dominant pistol play. Tied 6-6 at the half, the teams traded four-round streaks to remain tied. The stalemate continued into overtime, and then into double overtime, where Liquid closed their map pick 19-17. malbsMd led his squad with a 1.28 rating, while Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak finished their map pick with 15 AWPing frags.
Ancient saw NIP win the pistol and a couple of scattered rounds, but Liquid were the ones to string together multiple for an 8-4 lead. Artem "r1nkle" Moroz pre-ordered the AWP with an ace in the second half's pistol round, but Liquid persevered, securing matchpoint in round 20. NIP were only able to stall them for one more round before making their unfortunate exit from Rotterdam.
Ninjas in PyjamasLiquid| Ninjas in Pyjamas |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Kacper 'xKacpersky' Gabara |
59 - 55 | +4 | 94.4 | 71.6% | 1.24 |
 Marco 'Snappi' Pfeiffer |
45 - 42 | +3 | 67.3 | 70.3% | 1.06 |
 Artem 'r1nkle' Moroz |
50 - 44 | +6 | 74.4 | 67.6% | 1.01 |
| Artem 'cairne' Mushynskyi |
53 - 51 | +2 | 72.9 | 64.9% | 0.95 |
| Rasmus 'sjuush' Beck |
39 - 45 | -6 | 57.5 | 67.6% | 0.92 |
| Liquid |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski |
56 - 50 | +6 | 77.1 | 62.2% | 1.10 |
| Kamil 'siuhy' Szkaradek |
46 - 49 | -3 | 71.8 | 73.0% | 1.00 |
 Keith 'NAF' Markovic |
41 - 48 | -7 | 68.2 | 68.9% | 0.99 |
| Roland 'ultimate' Tomkowiak |
49 - 47 | +2 | 70.8 | 68.9% | 0.98 |
 Mario 'malbsMd' Samayoa |
44 - 54 | -10 | 62.9 | 66.2% | 0.94 |
Liquid will face the loser of Vitality vs MongolZ next.
