Forsaken deny Evil Geniuses IEM Sydney Closed Qualifier berth
The second North American open qualifier for IEM Sydney has come to a close, seeing Forsaken take down Evil Geniuses in a three-map affair to lay claim to the final closed qualifier spot up for grabs. While Forsaken will be joining up with Nouns, Complexity, and M80 in the closed qualifier, Evil Geniuses will be reevaluating their performances ahead of the start of ESL Challenger League Season 46.
Day two of play kicked off with some close matches in the quarterfinals, with Evil Geniuses having trouble against ClayMakers before ultimately coming out on top 16-13. In addition, Hound toppled the former timbermen of Badass 16-14, and Forsaken moved past Party Astronauts 16-10. The quarterfinal matchups were concluded by a dominant win for Bad News Bears, who notched a 16-4 scoreline over Kari. The two semifinals produced identical scorelines, with a 16-12 for Forsaken over Bad News Bears, and a 16-12 win for Evil Geniuses over Hound.
These results set the stage for a tantalizing series between Evil Geniuses and Forsaken, with Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz and Jerric "wiz" Wiang each set to face off against their former organization. Things kicked off on Forsaken's pick of Mirage, where an early 7-4 T-side start was neutralized by a four-round streak by Evil Geniuses, allowing the Geniuses to take the half 8-7. EG snatched the second pistol round, looking to run away with things, but Forsaken quickly responded with a stalwart defense to be the first to take double-digit rounds. Up 11-10, the map soon slipped away from Forsaken, with stanislaw's men only securing one more round before falling 16-12.
EG kept up their momentum on their pick of Vertigo, converting a pistol round win on T-side into a 4-0 start, but Forsaken soon responded with a streak of four rounds of their own. The remainder of the half was hotly contested, but this time it was Forsaken who came out on top with the upper hand, 8-7. In a mirror image of Mirage's second half, Forsaken took the second pistol round, but were denied a conversion by a streak of rounds from EG, who went on to take an 11-9 lead. Forsaken were unphased by this development, as the squad rallied on the offense with six rounds straight to claim match point, before closing things out 16-12 not long afterward.
This brings us to the final map of Overpass, where Evil Geniuses got off to a nice 3-0 start thanks to a pistol round victory. What was not so nice about this start is that these three rounds would end up constituting half of all the rounds EG would claim on this map, as Forsaken posted a devastatingly dominant CT-side to take a resounding 11-4 lead. EG secured the second pistol round in the hopes of clawing things back, but Forsaken immediately retorted with four rounds of their own to take series point, finishing things off only two rounds later.
ForsakenEvil Geniuses| Forsaken |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Gage 'Infinite' Green |
66 - 46 | +20 | 87.4 | 76.9% | 1.32 |
| Josh 'JBa' Barutt |
57 - 46 | +11 | 78.5 | 75.6% | 1.17 |
| Jerric 'wiz' Jiang |
55 - 43 | +12 | 71.7 | 71.8% | 1.11 |
| Danny 'cxzi' Strzelczyk |
46 - 57 | -11 | 76.8 | 70.5% | 0.99 |
 Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguz |
48 - 54 | -6 | 67.7 | 69.2% | 0.95 |
| Evil Geniuses |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paytyn 'junior' Johnson |
64 - 49 | +15 | 79.2 | 71.8% | 1.19 |
| Jeorge 'Jeorge' Endicott |
46 - 53 | -7 | 72.8 | 70.5% | 1.01 |
| Jadan 'HexT' Postma |
52 - 56 | -4 | 73.3 | 71.8% | 1.00 |
| Timothy 'autimatic' Ta |
47 - 59 | -12 | 72.5 | 70.5% | 0.98 |
| Colby 'Walco' Walsh |
36 - 56 | -20 | 57.6 | 61.5% | 0.79 |
The final list of teams for the North American IEM Sydney Closed Qualifier is:
Complexity Nouns
M80 Forsaken
The closed qualifier will be kicking off in just shy of two weeks, with the opening matches of the double-elimination bracket set to start on August 24th.
