Today marked the end of the first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event of the year, as BIG defeated Renegades in the grand finals to capture the title at DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020.

The two teams had taken very different paths to get to today’s final series. BIG, having won both of their matches on opening day, advanced straight to the Semi-Finals where they made quick work of Heroic winning the series 2-0. Renegades, who lost to BIG on day 1, had to work their way through the losers’ bracket where they faced MAD Lions in a semi-finals series that required all 3 maps to complete.

Looking at the match page on HLTV.org, the series began on Mirage. Despite going down 4 rounds to 1, BIG came back with a vengeance to take the first half 10-5. After that, BIG closed out the first map with 5 straight rounds en route to a 16-5 blow out on their map pick.

We then moved to Renegade’s map pick, which was Dust 2. The story seemed to play out the same way as the first map. Renegades got off to a hot start only to falter, eventually losing the first half 11-4. However, Renegades kept it close in the second half when they won the first 7 rounds. In the end BIG was able to ride the storm, closing the series out 2-0, and claiming the top prize at the first event of 2020.

BIG, who would not have been many people’s pick to win, looked seriously impressive throughout the whole tournament. They didn’t lose a single map and had some very convincing results against competition that’s considered better on paper. Even more impressive is the fact they only gave up 10 or more rounds in one map, that being the final game of this series.

They looked extremely sharp in the grand finals. They were consistently hitting their shots, and the mid-round reads and calls were on point. Everyone on the team ended the series with a positive K/D, though Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz and Nils “k1to” Gruhne were the standout performers for the German squad with 40+ kills in the series.

BIG struggled last year, even falling out of the top 30 of HLTV’s world rankings. This was a strong start to their 2020 campaign and should go some way towards silencing their critics. Whether they can keep this form up, and how they will fare against the bigger teams, remains to be seen in the coming months.

Source: HLTV.org