Team Yandex smacked LGD Gaming 3-1 in the grand final Sunday to win first prize at the BLAST Slam VII playoffs in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Yandex will bring home $300,000 out of the $1 million pool of prize money, plus an additional $100,000 club bonus. LGD Gaming settled for $150,000 and $45,000, respectively.
Yandex finished the tournament on a five-match winning streak. After they missed out on a top-four seed during group play, they won their last-chance qualifier in order to advance and proceeded to roll through the upper bracket of the playoffs — including two victories over LGD Gaming, the No. 1 seed.
Yandex beat LGD 2-1 in the upper-bracket semifinals, at which point LGD moved into the lower bracket. They rallied with three consecutive wins, prevailing 2-1 over BetBoom Team in the lower-bracket final earlier Sunday to set up the rematch in the best-of-five grand final.
But Team Yandex wouldn’t be denied. They won in 48 minutes on green and 42 minutes on red for an early advantage, and after LGD fought back with a 52-minute win on red, Yandex clinched the championship with a 31-minute victory on green.
Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov of Kazakhstan averaged 9.3 kills, 1.8 deaths and 9.3 assists across the four maps to lead Yandex. Teammate Ilya “CHIRA_JUNIOR” Chirtsov of Russia added an average K-D-A of 8.0-3.5-12.3.
Earlier, LGD sandwiched a 38-minute win on green and a 59-minute triumph on red around BetBoom’s 58-minute win on green for a 2-1 decision in the lower-bracket final. Wisper had a 10.7-3.3-14.7 average K-D-A.
The $1 million event began with a 12-team group stage last month. Group play was a round-robin, best-of-one format. The top two teams advanced to the upper-bracket semifinals of the playoffs, while the third- and fourth-place teams started in the upper-bracket quarters.
The fifth- and sixth-place teams proceeded to Round 2 of the last-chance qualifier, while teams 7-10 in the standings began in Round 1 of that stage. The bottom two teams were eliminated.
BLAST Slam VII payouts (prize money, team earnings)
1. $300,000, $100,000 — Team Yandex
2. $150,000, $45,000 — LGD Gaming
3. $70,000, $23,000 — BetBoom Team
4. $50,000, $17,000 — Aurora Gaming
5-6. $40,000, $15,000 — Team Falcons, Team Liquid
7-8. $25,000, $10,000 — Team Spirit, PARIVISION
9-10. $15,000, $5,000 — OG, Tundra Esports
11-12. $10,000, $2,500 — Xtreme Gaming, GLYPH
–Field Level Media
