Astralis, SAW and MOUZ claimed the final three playoff spots Tuesday at the $1.25 million PGL Cluj-Napoca event in Romania.
Astralis swept BIG, SAW did the same to 3DMAX and MOUZ eliminated Virtus.pro 2-1 in their respective Round 5 matches to finalize the eight-team, single-elimination playoff bracket.
Sixteen teams started the Counter-Strike 2 competition on Feb. 14. All the playoff matches are best-of-three until Sunday’s best-of-five grand final, where the winning team will take home $400,000.
Astralis got Tuesday’s do-or-die slate started by defeating BIG 13-7 on Ancient and 13-8 on Inferno. Martin “stavn” Lund of Denmark paced Astralis with 36 kills and a plus-14 kills-to-deaths differential.
SAW had a tougher time with 3DMAX, prevailing 13-10 on Nuke and 16-14 on Dust II. Jose “shr” Gil of Portugal had a team-high 44 kills with a plus-5 K-D differential for SAW.
MOUZ sandwiched a 13-8 win on Ancient and a 13-2 win on Mirage around a 16-13 loss to Virtus.Pro on Inferno. Dorian “xertioN” Berman of Israel led the MOUZ effort with 50 kills and a plus-13 K-D ratio.
The playoffs begin Friday with four quarterfinal matches:
FaZe Clan vs. SAW
Eternal Fire vs. Team Falcons
paiN Gaming vs. MOUZ
Astralis vs. The MongolZ
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 — 3DMAX, BIG, Virtus.pro
12-14. $18,750 — Wildcard, MIBR, Complexity
15-16. $12,500 — Imperial Female, FlyQuest
–Field Level Media
