Betclic are the champions of Stake Pulse Beat I after reverse-sweeping Liquid in the grand final of the Swedish LAN, losing Cache 11-13 before taking Anubis 13-10 and Nuke 13-7.
The win moved the Polish roster up 34 places in the Valve Regional Standings and into the world top 50, and arrives days before the team begins its Esports World Cup Open Qualifier campaign on Friday, HLTV reports.
For Liquid the defeat extends a LAN trophy drought that now stretches back seven years. The roster had looked promising coming into the event after adding Georgi "Jorko" Mitev and Johnny "JT" Theodosiou during the tournament break, debuting with online wins over Vitality and G2 to qualify for the BLAST Bounty Season 2 Finals. The team travelled to Stockholm the day after a LAN loss to Spirit, and HLTV describes it as running out of gas in the final.
Two collapses decide it
Liquid’s North American trio dominated the opening map, taking a 9-2 lead on Cache before squandering a 5v2 at the end of the half. The team narrowly lost four more clutches after the side swap and closed the map only 13-11. Keith "NAF" Markovic was blunt about the margin afterwards.
We just threw. We should’ve won 13-6.
Anubis followed a similar shape. Liquid led 6-2 on the offensive half and recovered from a pistol and conversion loss to lead 10-8 in the second, but could not convert. Another pistol loss opened the door for Betclic, who came back on the strength of multi-kills from Wojciech "Prism" Zięba and a 1v2 clutch by Konrad "Qlocuu" Klocek to take the map 13-10 and force a Nuke decider, where Betclic were in control from the start.
The two sides had met earlier in the event, with Liquid taking a narrow win in the Group B winners match before clean sweeps over 9INE and fnatic carried them into the world top 20. Betclic reached the final by beating Acend and Johnny Speeds in the playoffs. Both teams now head to Paris for the same Esports World Cup qualifier.
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