Even through the industrial earmuffs and the noise cancelling earpieces, there’s no way NiP weren’t just a little bit intimidated by the sound of thousands and thousands of Polish people chanting “Virtus.Pro! Virtus.Pro!” Rather than a replacement for skill, the fans were a reflection of the Polish team’s energy and passion to win one hundred thousand dollars by beating the Titanic of CS:GO teams, a team that would have been considered invincible one year ago.

The map veto was done on stage, in grand fashion, and consisted of the removal of nuke and train. Virtus.Pro selected de_mirage and NiP selected de_inferno as their first two maps, leaving de_dust2 as the third and final map. For mirage, NiP chose to play on the CT side, which turned out to not be in their favor. Winning the pistol round and the two consecutive rounds, Virtus.Pro had plenty of money in the first buy round. NiP did, however manage to win this buy round, but the Poles’ superior economy allowed them to take three more rounds before giving a round to NiP. NiP finally got a few more rounds, with GeT_RiGhT winning an astonishing save round. Constantly getting outplayed by their Polish counterparts, the Swedes lost the map with a crushing 16-9.

In competitive play, inferno is considered a CT-Sided map, which was why Virtus.Pro decided to choose counter-terrorists as their first side. Repeatedly going to side a, and repeatedly failing, NiP were down 5-0 before finally getting 2 buy rounds. The Poles then took back three rounds, executing their strategies with military precision. The second half ended with a confident, but careful Virtus.Pro leading 11 to 4. The second round saw an amazing hat-trick by Xizt, and the Ninjas coming back to 9-11, but the Poles managed to get to 15 points by rotating two members to A, then planting at B. The match point came down to one Ninja at bombsite B, with an auto pistol, who was quickly executed by Virtus.Pro.

The Poles threw down their earpieces and got up and stretched, the weight of their most important game in Counter-strike finally lifted. Taz rushed towards the trophy in an act of horrible sportsmanship but his team finally dragged him to the Ninjas’ side to shake hands. NiP was visibly distressed with their crushing loss, but the crowd made up for Taz’s rudeness by giving the Ninjas a hearty chant of “Nip! NiP!” while they took a bow and walked off backstage.

Yesterday, Taz had said in an interview: “We came here to destroy NiP,” and that’s exactly what they did. By any standard, this game was one of the greatest of this year, and the with thousands of people in the arena and over two-hundred thousand people watching from home, this is what counter-strike was meant to be.