Alexei 'Cypher' Yanushevsky defeated Kevin 'Strenx' Baeza over four maps, with the last going into overtime, to book his first place in a tournament final since IEM Dubai in October.

Cypher dominated the first two maps (ztn and dm6), consistently winning armour fights and putting in some strong rocket work.

t9 was extremely close with Strenx dominating the majority of the match, mirroring Cypher's earlier armour control. The last couple of minutes were really tight with Cypher pushing Strenx to make mistakes but the Frenchman didn't crack.

Heading into dm13 both players knew they had to perform to either confirm or save their hopes of making the final and throughout the game they gave it their all. With a little under 20 seconds left Strenx thought he could hold his lead but Cypher dramatically scored a frag to push the game into overtime.

In the extra two minutes Cypher looked more and more convincing and had the greater will to win the tie, reflected by him scoring the only frag of overtime to secure his place in the final which is set to take place later today.

(ztn - 11:3, dm6 - 17:6, t9 - 8:9, dm13 - 4:4 (overtime) - 5:3)

The other semi-final between Anton 'Cooller' Singov and Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski is taking place right now on ESL TV. Strenx will face the loser for third place.

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Picture credit: ESL World