The last year's winners of Katowice, Virtus.pro, continue their path towards the title defence as they eliminate Keyd Stars, the first non European or North American team to reach top eight at majors.
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Probably the most awaited match of the day 2 was the third quarter final duel which featured a last year's Katowice winners, the home team Virtus.pro and the team which made their debut at the majors, Keyd Stars. This is the first time that one team which is not coming from either Europe or North America makes it through to the top eight of one of the majors. The whole story behind Keyd Stars is great, as the community played a big role to help them to get over to Europe and have a chance to play against the best teams in the world. The Brazilian team received a big fund donations from ESEA and Flusha which made it possible for them to qualify and then even upset teams in Katowice. As expected, K.Stars went for de_mirage pick as they are considered to be one of the best on this map. However, Virtus.pro decided to go with de_overpass, while the third map choice was de_nuke.
Keyd Stars are known as one of the best teams on de_mirage. This came out mainly at Clutch Con where they defeated Fnatic by 16-7 and shocked everyone. Every since then, teams were mostly banning this map against the Brazilians, but the Polish team showed how fearless they are as they allowed them to pick it. As it was a map of Keyd's choice, VP decided to start over on more favored CT side. K.Stars opened with a great pistol round, fer took a 3 clean headshots and it was 1-0. VP quickly responded, on the wings of the home crowd they won a force buy round and made it 1-1. From that point on, VP just locked down K.Stars as nothing really worked out for them in terms of strats. Each option they tried ended up with the same scenario, so in the end they switched over to CT with only 3 rounds in their pocket. The second half didn't bring Keyd any lucky either. They repeated once again the great success with the pistols, by winning the first round of the second half but that was it. Virtus.pro closed this map with a convincing 16-4 scoreline.
Coming to the second map of this match, de_overpass, Keyd Stars didn't have the odds on their side. The analyst desk expected a clean shut down from VP. Virtus.pro was hoping for a quick win to finish this series with 2-0. However, K.Stars opened map once again by winning pistol round, but as we could see it so many times here in Katowice the team who lost pistol round won the one which followed. Virtus.pro had a lead of 3-1 at which point the Brazilian team changed the pace and started to play a way more agressive which brought them a lot of success and 11-4 lead at the end of the first half. To confirm their success with the pistols, K.Stars won one more pistol round make it four out of four as they climbed their way up to 14 rounds very quickly. At this point all they had to to is to finish the map. However, VP showed their great experience at the big events by bringing this back to tie and we saw a overtime. In the overtime K.Stars went first as Terorrists by winning the last round, which was a foce round, to make the score managable at 16-17. They needed only 3 more rounds on their CT side for 1-1 in this series. FalleN really stood up and pushed forward with great leaps taking down a few of VP players and closing a round by round. Even a fast rush couldnt help VP to get a single round on T side. Keyd Stars made it through this map and this match will be going to the third map.
The final map of this series brought the biggest win at this tournament so far. Virtus.pro had advantage of starting off at CT side and the Polish team were just scoring round after round making it 13-0 at which point K.Stars finally managed to clutch 1 round on T side. The half time score of 14-1 wasn't really promising for the Brazilian team, as it turned out that they couldn't move any further from that 1 round mark. VP took 16-1 win and a spot in semi finals against Fnatic.
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