After dominating their groups, Team Vitality sweep through the playoff bracket to win the BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2023. Beating FaZe Clan in the grand final has now ended their 18-game win-streak. While in the pre-match phase, you may have seen the odds vastly in favour of FaZe. This next step in the history of CS2 shows that Team Vitality is just as much a challenger in this new iteration of the game.
Team Vitality claim $200,000 in prize money and secure their spot in the BLAST Premier World Final 2023.
How did Vitality win the BLAST Premier: Fall Finals?
Team Vitality definitely made it look easy in the grand final. Despite FaZe already dominating the first 3 large tournaments of CS2, the score of the final painted a different story. Over all it was a 2-0 victory for Vitality. With Vitality going 13-3 in map 1, Vertigo, and 13-11 in Nuke. Like the above Tweet indicates, Twistzz had a 0.20 HLTV rating with only 1 frag across 14 rounds of play. Although Robin “ropz” Kool continued to play impressively, with a 1.23 rating on the first map and 1.12 on the second, it was simply not enough to challenge Vitality and win the BLAST Fall Final.
The big star of Vitality across the final series wasn’t ZywOo this time. It was in fact his partner Shahar “flameZ” Shushan who had a 1.44 total rating and 90 ADR across the full match. The fact that Vitality can win a tournament like this without relying on ZywOo, which they have had to in the past, is a strong indicator that they are here to do damage in all Counter-Strike 2 tournaments.
All this being said, it is worth paying attention to Cloud9. They put up enormous resistance against Vitality in the semi-final. They narrowly lost and easily looked like a team that could have also challenged FaZe in the finals.
What is next for Vitality?
After this win in the Fall Final, Team Vitality will be attending the BLAST Premier World Final 2023 in Abu Dhabi. This will take place from the 13th-17th December where they will compete for a $1,000,000 prize pool. Esports bettors are going to be viewing this tournament carefully. Now that FaZe no longer appear to be clear favourites, it does make it more complex to analyse other top teams.
Vitality will be in good spirits for now, looking to end 2023 on a high. It was a strong run earlier in the year in CS:GO, now they have to rebuild their momentum moving into the 2024 tournament season.
