Natus Vincere began its performance at the IEM Rio Major with matches against Vitality and Cloud9. So far, the team’s results can be called mixed: the game with Vitality ended in victory for NAVI after a long struggle in overtime (25 - 21), and then “born to win” lost to Cloud9 with a minimal margin (14 – 16).
The match against Vitality was essentially a confrontation between Alexander “s1mple” Kostylev and the leader of the European team Matthew “ZywOo” Erbo. Throughout the match on Mirage, neither team was able to achieve a decisive lead, and as a result, triple overtime was needed to determine the winner.
Natus Vincere's second game at the tournament was also played on Mirage, but ended not so successfully. Despite the fact that in the first half of the match Vitality was losing by a significant margin (13 - 7), NAVI failed to bring the game to victory. Their opponents first made up the difference and then achieved a decisive advantage (14 - 16). Commenting on the failure, s1mple mentioned on his Twitter that the reason for the defeat was a poor game plan and poor execution.
On the second day of the tournament, Natus Vincere will face Liquid, and most analysts believe that the American team will be weaker. Whether this is so will become clear very soon.
