After failing to secure a top-8 position in the European RMRs for PGL Major Copenhagen, several CS2 teams, including Astralis, GamerLegion, and Fnatic, had one last opportunity to qualify by winning the Decider Brackets.
However, with only one spot available and six competitors fighting for it, everyone knew that this would be a rough tournament. But nobody suspected that 9Pandas would be the winner. The thought that Astralis lost to this team is mind-boggling.
How can one of the strongest rosters in CS2 (on paper at least) lose to players no one has ever heard of? Except for Denis “seized” Kostin, who used to play for Natus Vincere back when Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev first joined the team, nobody on 9Pandas is a big name in Counter-Strike 2.
Meanwhile, Astralis has Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz and at least three other Danish players who are very famous right now. And the match wasn’t even a best-of-one. It was a regular best-of-three.
How 9Pandas Won The Decider Brackets
9Pandas started the Decider Brackets with a 2 – 0 victory against Astralis. The scores were quite close: 13 – 11 on Overpass and 13 – 8 on Nuke. What was strange in this match was that the whole Astralis roster played reasonably well. Martin “stavn” Lund was the only one who dragged a bit behind in frags. But his performance wasn’t bad.
But because of 9Pandas’ amazing performance, Astralis ended up losing. This defeat must have hurt. It’s never fun to miss the first Major of the year, especially after you invested a lot of money in your new and supposedly improved roster.
After winning this match, 9Pandas waited for their opponent in Round 2 of Stage 2. GamerLegion defeated Guild Eagles 2 – 0 and looked ready to win the final match.
But after losing the first map 14 – 16, 9Pandas went on to win on Ancient and Nuke with the exact same scores they had against Astralis, but in reverse: 13 – 8 on Ancient and 13 – 11 on Nuke.
You can imagine how happy and surprised they were after winning the match. This was not supposed to happen, but it did.
Some of the other big favorites failed against much weaker opponents, giving 9Pandas a relatively easy way to qualify for the Copenhagen Major. We’ll see in four weeks what they can do at this great CS2 event. Probably not much, but at least it’s a great opportunity for them to gain some experience.
Header image credit: 9Pandas
