Akatsuki win BESL Pro Season 4

WE HAVE A CHAMPION!

On the 23rd of November, the two best Baltic state teams met each other in Tallinn, Estonia on the HyperTown Tallinn 2019 esports stage in order to determine who’s going to take home the beautiful BESL Pro champions trophy and a check for €3,000!

The culmination of the €9,000 competition came in the form of an epic best-of-five grand final series between Latvians of SACRAMENTO and Lithuanians of Akatsuki.

The series began on Akatsuki’s map pick of Mirage and while SACRAMENTO did get to choose the starting side, it did not help them in the long run. Right from the get-go, Lithuanians wasted no time being cautious or playing slow, but rather chose the more aggressive approach to the game. Round after round, the attacks coming from Akatsuki were just too much for Latvians to handle and the first half ended with a dominant 11:4 lead in favor of the Lithuanian side. Upon the side switch, Akatsuki managed to secure the pistol round victory (12:4), but SACRAMENTO’s force buy in the second round swung the momentum back towards the Latvian side who ended up taking four rounds in a row (12:8), thus giving themselves an opening for a possible comeback. However, once Lithuanians got their hands on the rifles they wanted, their defense turned into a wall that SACRAMENTO just couldn’t push through and the first map ended with a 16:8 victory in favor of Akatsuki.

The second map in the series was Nuke and with Latvians picking the map, Akatsuki got themselves a start on the CT side where they kept the momentum from Mirage going with victories in both the pistol and the second round (2:0). After that, SACRAMENTO answered back with two rounds of their own (2:2) but were unable to keep the ball rolling as they once again got shut down by Akatsuki’s strong defense. Teams kept stringing round wins back and forth, but at the end of the first half, it was the Lithuanians side who came out on top with ten rounds to their name (10:5). With SACRAMENTO now playing on the CT side, it was their time to muster a defense that would be unbreakable and even though they lost the pistol round (11:5), they still bounced back with the second round force buy victory plus two additional rounds to keep themselves in the game (11:8). At that point, it seemed like we have a game on our hands, but Akatsuki thought otherwise and as soon as their economy stabilized, they began picking up round wins left and right eventually closing out the map with a 16:10 scoreline in their favor.

The third and final map in the series was Dust2 - a map that was once again chosen to be played by the Lithuanian side. In return, SACRAMENTO chose to start on the CT side and in the beginning, the choice seemed to be the right one as they converted the pistol round victory into an early 3:0 lead. But, sadly for Latvians, everything went downhill after that. Akatsuki started dominating the T side breaching the SACRAMENTO’s defense round after round coming to a very comfortable 10:5 lead at the half time. Upon the side switch, it was do or die time for SACRAMENTO and if they wanted to keep the dream of lifting the trophy alive, they had to step up their game. And that is exactly what they did! After a solid T side pistol round victory, Latvians started picking up round wins one after the other winning seven of the first eight rounds into the second half, thus taking back the lead that they had at the beginning of the map (12:11). The final stretch of Dust2, however, was not as close as it seemingly should’ve been as right after that Akatsuki managed to break their opponent’s economy and run away with a 16:12 victory thus closing out the series and becoming the champions of BESL Pro Season 4!