Yahoo Finance Ninjas in Pyjamas win Starladder i-League StarSeries S2 finals
The StarLadder i-League Season 2 finals took place at the Cyber Arena in Kiev, Ukraine this past weekend, with Ninjas in Pyjamas taking home their second trophy of the year. NiP beat out 15 other Counter-Strike teams to win the lion’s share of the $300,000 prize pool.
This tournament was a little different from the typical international affair. Three Chinese teams — MVP, Tyloo, and Vici Gaming — stepped up to challenge the household names we’ve come to know from North America and Europe.
Surprisingly, the Eastern teams found success and managed a few upsets before going home. The region has posted only a handful of positive results in CS:GO, though much of that is due to limited access to international competition. While none of the three made it out of groups, Tyloo managed to pull out a win against Na’Vi on Mirage and take a map off of Astralis before elimination. Vici Gaming also brought down a titan by defeating Virtus.Pro with a convincing 16-7 scoreline on Mirage, one of VP’s best maps.
The weekend’s event also cemented the idea that Cloud9 has finally regained their footing after changing their lineup substantially over the past year. Since adding Timothy “autimatic” Ta, the squad has hit its stride. They went undefeated in groups, besting Vici and EnVyUs before meeting NiP in the semi-finals of the playoff bracket.
NiP themselves are back in all-star form. The team found marginal success since winning Dreamhack Malmo in April, but in Kiev, NiP navigated groups without dropping a single map. They squeaked past Astralis in the quarter finals 2-1, went 2-0 over Cloud9, and drove it home with a 2-0 over G2 esports.
Noticeably absent were the big Brazilian teams, SK Gaming and Immortals. SK withdrew due to Fernando “fer” Alvarenga undergoing surgery. He was reunited with his team after recovering in Brazil over the weekend.
DreamHack Bucharest is the next major offline tournament and will feature EnVyUs, Virtus.pro, Dignitas, FaZe Clan, and Cloud9. After Bucharest, October kicks off with ESL One New York, which will be the first comeback event for SK Gaming, a grand reintroduction to Team Liquid, and one of the first big tests for the new Fnatic roster.
Dylan Walker is on Twitter @dyluuxx