AVANGAR top ECS Season 8 Europe week 1 over forZe

AVANGAR have secured the first week victory of ECS Season 8 after besting FORZE 2-1 in the grand final.

The first week of ECS Season 8 in Europe has drawn to a close as the eight-team tournament reached its conclusion following an all-CIS final which saw AVANGAR pitted against Russian side FORZE in a rematch of the recent BLAST Pro Series Moscow final.

AVANGAR had made their way to the final with victories over Virtus.pro and a fnatic side that had seen the return of Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist and Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim. Meanwhile, FORZE had reached the final stage by taking down Ambush and Japaleno in the previous rounds.

Jame continued his fine run of form to end the series with a 1.68 rating

The grand final looked destined for a swift ending as AVANGAR took control of the series with a 16-9 showing on their map pick of Dust2. However, FORZE recomposed going into Inferno, where they grinded out a closely-contested 16-14 map win to force a decider.

As the series headed in the direction of Train, AVANGAR turned their game up a notch, locking down 12 rounds on the CT side in rapid fashion. Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali and his squad swiftly took the remaining four rounds on the offensive half to take a 16-3 map victory, and a 2-1 series win to top week one of ECS Season 8 Europe with $12,500 in winnings.

ECS Season 8 Europe Week 1Best of 3 AVANGAR

AVANGAR

Matchpage 2 1 19th September 2019

FORZE 16Dust2 9 14Inferno 16 16Train 3

AVANGAR	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Dzhami 'Jame' AliJame	76 - 35	+41	103.3	1.68
Timur 'buster' Tulepovbuster	71 - 41	+30	93.1	1.44
Dauren 'AdreN' KystaubayevAdreN	52 - 48	+4	79.3	1.15
Sanjar 'SANJI' KulievSANJI	50 - 43	+7	71.5	1.13
Alexey 'Qikert' GolubevQikert	37 - 45	-8	60.4	0.92

FORZE	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Evgenii 'FL1T' LebedevFL1T	44 - 55	-11	71.5	0.99
Dmitriy 'facecrack' Alekseyevfacecrack	43 - 52	-9	69.8	0.91
Andrey 'Jerry' MekhryakovJerry	46 - 60	-14	74.3	0.90
Almaz 'almazer' Asadullinalmazer	43 - 64	-21	65.2	0.78
Bogdan 'xsepower' Chernikovxsepower	36 - 55	-19	51.2	0.72

AVANGAR have now taken a giant step towards securing the first European spot at the ECS Season 8 Finals, which will go to the team that accumulates the most prize money over the course of the first two $25,000 single-elimination online cups. After that, each weekly winner will automatically qualify for the main event.