After a convincing 3-1 victory over Furia Esports, Team Liquid has won cs_summit 8.
Hosts Beyond the Summit called in eight teams from North and South American to compete for $50,000 and 10,000 Regional Majors Rankings points with Liquid taking the trophy through a solid run in the upper bracket. The boys in blue have stayed competitive in 2021, but this is the squad’s first big win of the year.
This also marks Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo’s first first-place finish since ECS Season 7 in 2019. The godfather of Brazilian CSGO picked up multiple AWP highlights during the finals, including a complete shutdown against Furia’s eco attempt.
A group stage loss to Extra Salt sent Liquid to a decider match against EXTREMUM. A close 2-1 victory gave Jacky “Stewie2K” Yip’s team a winners bracket start in the playoffs. A dominant 2-0 over paiN Gaming gave them some confidence, though their upper bracket finals match Furia was a matter of endurance.
Furia’s map pick, Nuke, ended 22-18 in Liquid’s favor. Overpass went even further into overtime, eventually finished by Furia. The final game on Inferno went the full 30 rounds, ending 16-14 to Liquid.
The grand finals rematch was expected to be a similar slog, but something had clearly clicked for Liquid in the finals. The squad’s 16-7 performance on Overpass gave way to another win on Nuke. A close loss in Inferno was just a speedbump on Liquid’s way to the gold. One final stomp on Mirage sealed $17,000 and 1600 Regional Major Rankings points.
Liquid’s victory was punctuated with an excellent performance from Keith “NAF” Markovic. The Canadian opened up the series with a slick four-piece on Overpass. He boasted the most impressive record of the finals at 80 kills to 53 deaths.
Team Liquid’s next big CSGO event will be Intel Extreme Masters XVI Cologne, where 24 teams will compete on LAN for $1,000,000.
