Team Liquid and Acend outshine opponents to advance to Red Bull Home Ground #2 Final

Heading into day 3, it was once again expected to be an extended day with the "home ground" rule in the Best-of-5 formats.

The day started off with Team Liquid taking on up and coming TENSTAR.

In the first map, Team Liquid dominated on their map pick of Ascent, finishing the contest with a 13-8 victory. As usual, the teams star duelists, Elias "Jamppi" Olkkonen & Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom showed why they are a level above the rest of the team in terms of fragging ability. Jamppi and Scream finished the map with 27 and 24 kills respectively, and an ACS of 341 & 310.

On the second map, and their Home Ground choice of Icebox, Tenstar had hoped to claw back from the teeth of elimination. However, Liquid once again proved they are immensely better in every way. They chose a different composition than normal, choosing to go with the Raze for a second duelist instead of the typical Killjoy. That choice worked out in the end, as Liquid took control on the defense side, leading to an 8-4 half.

They then took the consequent pistol rounds to up their lead to 6 rounds. From that point on, it was pure aim battles, and with former CSGO prodigies on their side, Liquid won many of them. The map would go on to finish with a final score of 13-9.

Match MVP: Elias "Jamppi" Olkkonen

Next up, we saw GIANTX take on Acend in a battle of behemoths.

First was Vodafone's homeground map pick of Split, an uncommon pick among professional teams. In the early stages of the map, Acend showed that they are not to be taken for granted, even on a lesser played map. At the half Acend led with a 10-2 half, on their own attacking side they didn't slow down at all, as they went on to win their opponents map choice at a 13-4 final. As Mehmet Yağız "cNed" İpek continued to show why he is arguably one of the best Jett players in the entire world, finishing with an ACS of 267 while the rest of the team performed admirable as well.

On Acend's home ground map choice of Breeze, many expected the same result as Split, and boy did we get that. The map started off with a 3k from cNeD that led to a round 3 bladestorm for the star player. Everything seemed to go their way as they pulled out to a 9-3 half advantage. On Vodafone's attacking side they seemed much more poised, as they won the first two pistol rounds, however the deficit proved to be too much for the Giants as Acend secured a 13-9 victory to finish out the series in a clean 2-0 sweep.

**Match MVP: Patryk "starxo" Kopczynski **

Going into the final day of the tournament we have some excellent games for the day.

• 1:00 CET Tenstar vs Vodafone Giants
• 5:00 CET Acend vs Team Liquid