Team Falcons, Eternal Fire and paiN Gaming won their Round 4 high matches on Monday to ensure their spots in the playoffs of the $1.25 million PGL Cluj-Napoca event in Romania.
Falcons rallied past MOUZ 2-1, Eternal Fire took down 3DMAX 2-1 and paiN swept Virtus.pro 2-0. The losing teams will have one more chance to qualify in Round 5 on Tuesday.
Rounds 2-5 of the event will be seeded using the Buchholz system and the teams’ initial seeds. All matches in the group stage are best-of-three, with the top eight teams advancing to the single-elimination playoffs. The grand final will be best-of-five.
On Monday, MOUZ struck first by beating Team Falcons 13-8 on Dust II before Falcons retaliated with a 13-10 victory on Mirage and a 13-8 win on Ancient. Russia’s Abdul “degster” Gasanov led all players with 48 kills and a plus-10 kills-to-deaths differential for Falcons.
Eternal Fire sandwiched wins of 13-10 on Anubis and 13-11 on Nuke around a 13-5 defeat on Inferno to 3DMAX. Samet “jottAAA” Koklu was the hero for the all-Turkish Eternal Fire, with 55 kills and a plus-12 K-D.
paiN Gaming edged Virtus.pro 13-9 on Inferno and 13-10 on Mirage. Chile’s David “dav1deuS” Tapia Maldonado led paiN with 35 kills on a plus-7 differential, while Brazil’s Lucas “nqz” Soares added 31 kills on a plus-10.
There were also three Round 4 low matches that eliminated three more teams. BIG knocked out Wildcard 2-1, Astralis outlasted MIBR by the same score and SAW bounced Complexity 2-0.
The final three, do-or-die matches are set for Tuesday:
–Astralis vs. BIG
–3DMAX vs. SAW
–MOUZ vs. Virtus.pro
PGL Cluj-Napoca prize pool:
1. $400,000
2. $187,500
3. $150,000
4. $87,500
5-8. $62,500
9-11. $31,250
12-14. $18,750 — Wildcard, MIBR, Complexity
15-16. $12,500 — Imperial Female, FlyQuest
–Field Level Media
