Just last week Arc talked about OpTic Gaming’s unlikely victory in ELEAGUE but the celebration was short-lived as they met up once again with Astralis in another CS:GO final at the Anaheim Convention Center & Arena. The rematch of the ELEAGUE final was for a $250,000 grand prize and for the title of Esports Championship Series Season 2 Champion.
Both teams had to beat pretty impressive competition to even make this rematch possible. OpTic Gaming had to face off against the formidable french squad in Team EnVyUs and their star player Kenny “kennyS” Schrub while Astralis went face-to-face with perennial favourites SK Gaming and eSports player of the year Marcelo “coldzera” David. Both teams were able to achieve 2-0 victories and the rematch storyline was alive.
Granted, the ECS is considered smaller. The winner taking home $250,000 USD while in ELEAGUE OpTic Gaming came home with $400,000 but Astralis obviously wanted to prove they were not just finals choke artists and OpTic wanted to prove their victory was not a fluke. At least Astralis was able to prove something as they took Overpass 16-6 and Train 16-11 to achieving the 2-0 victory. Specifically Peter “dupreeh” Rasumussen, who had a very poor showing at the ELEAGUE Final (50-54 KD, 68.9 ADR), found a way to step it up being the statistical leader for his team and the match (42-28 KD, 85.8 ADR). Nicolai “device” Reedtz (41-30, 82.3 ADR) continued to be solid as well and proved that he just needed a little bit of support to overtake OpTic Gaming with his squad.
Meanwhile on the other end of things, the Canadian Keith “NAF” Markovic who was a monster in the ELEAGUE final (78-45 KD, 104.1 ADR) was perhaps the worst on his team in the best of three for the ECS (23-38 KD, 62.3 ADR). Not a single member of OpTic Gaming went positive as Tarik “tarik” Celik was the team leader in kills and ADR(35-39 KD, 79.9 ADR). SO needless to say it was a rough showing for the team that gave North America some hope that the “gap was closing.”
This is actually Astralis’s first finals victory in something that was not just a qualifier since coming together in January after the members of Team SoloMid left that organization for their own. It took some surprising shakeups of the roster including the departures of star player René “cajunb” Borg back in May and former in-game leader Finn “karrigan” Anderson back in October. However, the additions of Markus Kjaerbye and new in-game leader Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander proved to finally be worth it as they can now call themselves ECS champions.
This is the last premier event of the year. The next one being DreamHack Leipzig starting on January 13 and then the ELEAGUE Major starting in January 22.
Jonny eSports is the Senior Editor of eSports here on AYB and makes eSports videos that appear on Thursdays during the AYBTV Live Podcast on twitch.tv/AYBTV. He also streams on AYBTV on Tuesday evenings. You can follow him on Twitter @jonnyesports or on Facebook! He always looks good after the pistol round but is garbage once other people can buy actual rifles.
