G2 Esports managed to defeat BIG after a huge upset on the first map to advance to the next round of the ESL Pro League playoffs.
G2 Esports and BIG played a great match at the start of the ESL Pro League Season 19 playoffs where G2 managed to avoid defeat on Inferno despite the opponent having eight map points, after which they outclassed the stunned opponent on the Ancient map with a dominant game.
Nothing went G2's way at the start of Inferno where BIG took a 7-1 lead before G2 finally managed to stop them for a while to get to a respectable 4-8 at the half. However, BIG wins the pistol round and continues to dominate the rest of the game, quickly reaching a seemingly unattainable 12-4.
Instead of a routine finish, the first map went into a suspenseful ending as G2 began to grind out round after round, going 8-0 into overtime. They didn't use the first opportunity to win in them, this time BIG was the one who won another overtime, but in them G2 won 19-16 to the delight of their fans.
On the map, Ancient G2 carried the energy from Inferno and dominated during the first half, and as the icing on the cake came the incredible Ace of Nikola "NiKo" Kovač, where he made four kills with the Desert Eagle pistol, before registering the fifth kill for Ace, bringing his team the ninth round in the first half.
BIG couldn't prevent disaster in the sequel and G2 goes to a convincing 13-4, and NiKo finished the map with a 26-5 score, 140.9 damage per round and 2.40 rating, which is also his third best played map according to statistics so far career.
At the same time, FlyQuest and BetBoom were playing, and the Australian team managed to turn around a 0-1 deficit to win (11-13 Vertigo, 13-9 Mirage, 13-9 Anubis).
