On Monday, we played the upper bracket final of the IEM Dallas 2023 Europe Closed Qualifier against Cloud9 for a spot at IEM Dallas 2023. Here's how it went!

The battle began at noon CET with an absolute thriller of a map. On our map pick, Ancient, we kicked off the bracket final in great fashion with four consecutive round wins. The rest of the first half turned in favor of Cloud9, with our opponent winning the half 7-8. Our CT side has had its weaknesses in the last few months, but this time around, we proved that hard work pays off! With the half going somewhat back-and-forth, we eventually tied the score to go into overtime. Fortunately, we quickly secured the win in overtime with an overall score of 19-16!

Next up was Mirage, Cloud9's map pick. Mirage has, historically, not been a map we have played much competitively, so we had to be on our toes. Unfortunately, we lost both halves, 5-10 and 2-6, respectively. We gave it our best, but our opponents bested us with sh1ro, in particular, being too strong.

With the score now set a 1-1, the final and decisive map, Overpass, was up next. With a strong start, we quickly saw ourselves headed for Dallas. Nicolai 'dev1ce' Reedtz is notoriously known for his consistency, and his performance on Overpass was no exception. On our CT side alone, dev1ce managed 23 frags and a 2.20 rating! Going into the second confidently, we finished off our opponent and won the map 16-13.

Our win over Cloud9 means that we are now qualified for IEM Dallas 2023 running from May 29 - June 4! We are proud of what we have achieved so far and hope to perform well in Dallas!

Thank you for your continued support throughout this qualifier, and we can't wait to see and hear from you again when we fight in Dallas!