SK Gaming have broken the fnatic spell, at least for now, of winning major events which began back at the Extreme Masters III Global finals. The new look SK team took the final in two maps, winning both in overtime, and their two new recruits get their first taste of a major event victory.

SK Gaming 21:18 fnatic (nuke 6:9, 9:6, 3:2, 3:1)
SK Gaming 21:16 fnatic (train 11:4, 4:11, 4:1, 2:0)

The Managing Director of SK-gaming, bds, gave this quote about the victory:



On the first map, nuke, it was fnatic who got the fast start, as Terrorists, and looked strong early as they ran the score up to 7:0 before SK could take a round. Once they were on the board though SK dug in and pulled the rest of the half away from fnatic getting the game to 9:6 in fnatic's favour at the end of the half. fnatic had played a probing style of offense, moving into an area and killing the CTs there but then holding and waiting for CT aggression or slowly moving into the next area. This proved less successful later in the half as SK's players picked some opportune times to rotate or simply outshot fnatic in key battles.

On their turn as Terrorists SK won the pistol round but fnatic came right back on the first gun round and soon the score was 3:2 to SK. From here SK emulated fnatic and ran the score up to 8:3, taking the lead. They would only win one more round before fnatic took the last 3 and tied it up though. This half saw a mistake from allen where he allowed f0rest to defuse in a 1v2 at upper, presumably thinking it was a fake defuse.

In overtime fnatic took control again going up 2:0 but SK took the last three rounds to seize back the lead. In the second to last round cArn had killed his opponents in a clutch situation but had the bomb go off moments before he could get the defuse. In the second half SK won back-to-back 2v2s to reach map-point, though they would have to wait a round to win as f0rest kept fnatic alive. The map win came for SK with kHRYSTAL killing the last two players in the lower bombsite and giving SK a huge boost of momentum to head into train hoping for their first big tournament win of 2009.

SK won the pistol as CT on train following GeT_RiGhT allowing the SK player to defuse while in a 1v2 on the T side of upper inner. fnatic came right back though and won the next 3 rounds in a row. Then it was SK's turn to peel off some rounds and the game was 3:3 as face and RobbaN did good work in the inside bombsite to prevent fnatic even getting entry most of the time, nevermind planting the bomb. Now SK took firm control of the map and won round after round to finish up a convincing 11:4.

As was the pattern so far in the match fnatic were not going to be run over and continued to respond to SK runs. The beginning oftheir CT half saw them go 4:0 before losing a round. Even then fnatic continued to apply the pressure, with GeT_RiGhT playing the tower area particularly well, and the score got to 9:2 for fnatic. The 12th round saw a 3v2 for SK turn into a 1v2 but walle save the day. After f0rest could only kill two SK in a 1v3 SK arrived at map point with two rounds to go. It was not to be in regulation for SK though as fnatic held on to push the game into overtime. On the final round of the half SK tried to rush the backside of the outer site but cArn sprayed down the last three SK players as they came around the corner.

A second overtime and SK came out in full force with fnatic only managing a single kill in the first round. GuX tied things up in the second killing two SK players from the bomb train. That was to be it for fnatic in that half though and SK won the last three, including a key 1v1 where cArn was killed by allen on the outside bombtrain to put SK two rounds from a Chengdu championship.

The second half began with SK immediately getting to match-point in the first round. The second round saw GeT_RiGhT once again put in an almost identical situation to his earlier mistake and amazingly he repeated that mistake, allowing kHRYSTAL to straight defuse and SK to win the Global Challenge Chengdu. It's looks like those SK players will remember those fake defuses for a long time to come.

SK moments after winning:



SK can now confirm face and kHRYSTAL are fully signed and SK players for good now.

Global Challenge Chengdu CS results:

1st SK-Gaming ($15,000)
2nd fnatic ($7,500)
3rd WeMadeFox ($2,000)
4th TyLoo ($1,000)

* This is an internal SK joke from 2003 when team9 won ESWC and their team leader vesslan said "bäst i världen" which translates from Swedish as "best in the world".

(Photograph copyright of ESL-World)