Liquid picked up their first win against a top-5 team since Fall Groups and are set to face another team tomorrow.

NAF prevented going into extra time on the Nuke map with a surprise play in a 1v3 situation

Liquid booked their ticket to the playoffs round of BLAST Premier Fall Final with a dramatic 2-1 victory over Spirit in the opening round of Group B. 

Russell "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken's team will next face Vitality in the winner's bracket finals, vying for a direct spot in the semi-finals in a rematch from last week's ESL Pro League group stage 2. There, Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's team won after 3 maps.

Meanwhile, Spirit has fallen into the qualifying zone and will face new Astralis for a spot in the quarterfinals.

Since their first appearance with Roland "⁠ultimate⁠" Tomkowiak and Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage at BLAST Premier Fall Groups, Liquid have had difficulty facing top teams, with a four-match losing streak. next against teams in the top 6. They ended that losing streak with a win over Spirit and prepare to meet another opponent tomorrow in the match against Vitality.

Liquid had to bounce back from a heavy loss on Dust2 to win the series. Although they started competitively, they quickly lost their advantage when they lost the bomb in a 2v2 situation and allowed Spirit to defuse the bomb, and then lost in two consecutive rounds. Down 3-9 and losing the next pistol round, they didn't even get a chance to play their dynamic, high-speed CT strategy on this map.

However, Nuke quickly became a different story as Liquid took a big lead on the CT side with Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis at the top of the leaderboard, despite being clearly sick and having to run to the bathroom during the round.

The end of the map turned out to be more difficult than expected, as Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets' 1v2 clutch kick-started Spirit's big winning streak on the CT side. As the match neared its conclusion, it looked like it would go into overtime, until Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic stepped up with a 1v3 clutch to end the match at the last moment.

With problems on the T side on Nuke, Spirit also struggled on the attack side on Anubis. Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov was the only one to stand out, while Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia continued his nightmare form on the T side after previously going 0-12, and Liquid took advantage. Make good use of this.

Spirit once again showed better form on the CT side, as did zont1x, but it wasn't enough to bounce back from rounds 4-8, where the T side was often favored on Anubis. Finally, another big clutch, this time from YEKINDAR, ended the series.