LPL PRO CS:GO ANZ Championship Wrap-Up: Week 1 & 2
WEEK ONE
LetsPlay.Live kicked off our CSGO ANZ Championship yesterday – staring 8 of the best teams across Australia and New Zealand. The first week of competition saw a rematch of the 2018 grand final with the champions Chiefs taking on the runner-ups Tainted Minds.
16 – 10
In 2018 these two teams fought in the Grand Final of the LPL Pro CS:GO ANZ Invitational which saw the Chiefs squad take out the first two maps 16-12 and 16-6 and easily slide into a overall victory to raise the trophy. Since then Chiefs eSports Club player Sam ‘flickz’ Jones chose to retire and they found a suitable replacement in Peter ‘BL1TZ’ Athanasatos who had just been dropped, along with the rest of the squad, from Legacy Esports in January.
Early on it looked to be a repeat of last year with Chiefs kicking the match off to a strong start by going 8-0 up on the T-Side of Overpass, largely due to the heroics of Texta who had a dominating performance. USTILO and the rest of Tainted Minds tried to mount a comeback and managed to win the second half pistol round and get the score almost in their favor at 10-8, but in the end the Chiefs was the stronger team on the day and began to regain momentum to pick up the last 6 rounds they needed for victory.
16 – 9
It was a game of momentum on Train with AVANT taking the first 3 rounds, Genuine taking 5, AVANT taking 6 and then Genuine fighting for the last round of the half to leave them 9-6 down after their CT-Side. With Train being as CT-Sided as it is the writing was on the wall from the start of the second half and AVANT claiming the pistol round just cemented the result as AVANT finished off Genuine in Round 25.
16 – 1
In the most one-sided match of the week the Kiwi-based team of Breakaway Esports started off strong capturing the first 7 rounds on Overpass before finally dropping one to Paradox, despite some attempted heroics from Andrew ‘YDNA’ Adams. That one round that Paradox picked up would be the last as Breakaway got their momentum back and continued to steamroll right through the second pistol and finish out the game only dropping 1 round.
16 – 9
This match wasn’t as much of a stomp as the scoreline would suggest. Ground Zero and Athletico were trading rounds for most of the first half, unfortunately for Athletico a lot of close rounds fell on the side of Ground Zero and they managed to finish the half at 10-5. Ground Zero then switched over to the T-Side on Cache, picked up the pistol round, and despite a bit of a slip, looked stronger than ever to close out the game with a win.
WEEK TWO
LetsPlay.Live’s CS:GO ANZ Championship continued along this week with some overtime and some stomping. Also, we see Tainted Minds be acquired and re-branded to ICON Esports, just before their match against AVANT this week.
16 – 13
THE PILLAR! THE PILLAR! THE PILLAR!
Genuine had everything they needed to win this map and actually looked really good on the day, but got unlucky in almost every situation that could have gone either way. Genuine even had the top-fragger of the server with ap0c ending the map with 36 kills, the second highest being Ground Zero’s Zemp on 29 kills. Let’s not take anything away from Ground Zero as they worked hard to win this match on Mirage and constantly had to clutch the game back.
19 – 15
Breakaway came into Inferno as the favorite after their 16-1 win last week, but it looked scary early on with Breakaway only being able to get 1 round out of the first 11. They was falling apart in the early moments of this match on their CT-side and then after the half-time break a new fire was lit under Breakaway who just clawed rounds back, mostly by bomb explosion, until they managed to tie the game up 15-15.
Athletico surprised everyone with the fight they brought to regulation, but when it went to overtime they started on the CT-side, which was their weaker side in regular time, and couldn’t mount a single round. That left Breakaway in a really strong position only requiring one round to take the match and they got it first try in the second half of overtime.
16 – 1
ICON (fka. Tainted Minds) were coming off a hard-fought loss last week against Chiefs and didn’t want to see the L again heading into Mirage against AVANT. Round 8 is all AVANT saw for the entire game and it wasn’t even decisive because it came down to bomb explosion. There isn’t a whole lot to say about this match as ICON were just the better team, plain and simple, and showed that to everyone watching.
16 – 8
tucks and co. just couldn’t find a answer to Paradox as they collided on Inferno. Chiefs started out on the easier CT-side and were only able to mount 6 rounds in that half thanks to heroics from Valiance, Noobster, sibe…and keeyto and screw it Chub as well – the entire team of Paradox were rolling in that game. Once we got to the second half and Paradox took the pistol round it was just a matter of time before Chiefs fell to the now 1-1 Paradox.
Rankings as of Week Two
| Rank | Team | Matches | Match W/L | Round W/L | Round Diff | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Breakaway Esports |
1 | 1 | – | 0 | 16 | : | 1 | 15 |
| 2 | Ground Zero |
1 | 1 | – | 0 | 16 | : | 9 | 7 |
| 2 | Avant Gaming |
1 | 1 | – | 0 | 16 | : | 9 | 7 |
| 4 | Chiefs Esports Club |
1 | 1 | – | 0 | 16 | : | 10 | 6 |
| 5 | Tainted Minds |
1 | 0 | – | 1 | 10 | : | 16 | -6 |
| 6 | Genuine Gaming |
1 | 0 | – | 1 | 9 | : | 16 | -7 |
| 6 | Athletico |
1 | 0 | – | 1 | 9 | : | 16 | -7 |
| 8 | Paradox |
1 | 0 | – | 1 | 1 | : | 16 | -15 |
How to watch
Tune in every at on SKY Sport in New Zealand and Twitch.tv/LetsPlayLive worldwide.
The Semi-Finals and Grand Finals will be played live from the LetsPlay.Live studios in Auckland, New Zealand on and respectively.
This article was originally published on Esports Kingdom.
Written by: Grady Hooker
Image credit: HLTV
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