Both SK Gaming and fnatic have won their opening matches of the IOL FINAL4 tournament against their respective opponents (dateam and Lions swe) comfortably.

SK Gaming vs dateam - 16:4 on de_dust2

After wining the knife round, dateam took the terrorist side and marched into an early lead, taking the first round after rotating to mid and short following a denied b push. The second round saw Patrik 'f0rest' Lindberg in a one on three situation, where he managed to take out two players however was shut down in the end and as a result, dateam had a huge economic advantage which they used to their advantage, pushing a long on the third round and easily taking out SK.

On the first major buy round, Johan 'face' Klasson and Jon 'hyvlarn' Edelsvärd were put into a one on one situation with the bomb down on b-site. Although a resilient hyvlarn was able to take out face's teammates with his AWP, his sniper rifle proved to be ineffective at short range and as a result face managed to take him out and defuse the bomb to take SK's first round. From there, SK managed to take nine rounds in a row even with the terrorists planting the bomb and having number advantages. Furthermore, on the the ninth round, after both teams took heavy casualties, Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund managed to win a three on one clutch after taking out a player faking an A bombsite push and swinging around to the B bombsite to take out two other players and secure the bomb.

The 13th round saw dateam finally to take a buy round, however SK quickly replied by taking two rounds with relative comfort. As a result, SK took the first half with a score of 11:4 as CTs.

After taking the pistol round, SK were in a strong position to end the match earlier and by constantly applying pressure to a weak A bombsite, SK managed to their first game of the tournament: second half score: 5:0, final score: 16:4.

fnatic vs Lions - 16:3 on de_dust2

Up next is the "Clash of the titans" - SK Gaming taking on fnatic on de_nuke in their first of possibly many matches against each other this weekend.

Upcoming fixures:

SK Gaming vs fnatic (de_nuke):
hltv1.verygames.net:27050

Lions swe vs players (de_nuke):
hltv1.verygames.net:27051