Chapter 288

Xu Beifang woke up from his sleep, his body no longer feeling fatigued.

But perhaps because he went to bed too late yesterday, he couldn't muster much energy now.

Yesterday, he only played one BO3 match, so he shouldn't have been too tired.

However, after returning to the hotel, the bald coach wanted to take advantage of the early time to review the entire match they had just played and finish off this BO3.

The team's players had just won the match and were in high spirits, so naturally, there was no problem.

Moreover, because of IEM Sydney's unique format, they advanced directly to the top four of the playoffs as the group leader.

This left them with free time for the next few days.

Everyone didn't want to put off such a review and affect their mood later.

You have to know—in most cases, the final result of post-match reviews is not very good; arguments, pressure, silence, and other negative emotions almost always accompany the unfolding of post-match reviews.

During post-match reviews, everyone is in a different position, and their thoughts on in-game decisions are different, which leads to disagreements.

In the review of the two maps they won, although there were occasional small arguments in some places, there were no major problems overall.

But on that map, Overpass.

They reviewed it a full three times...

Because several times, halfway through the review, Xu Beifang, shox, and apEX had already started arguing.

Xu Beifang was at the front, and sometimes the timing of the firefight was fleeting.

shox, in the rear, believed that sometimes the front might be played a bit slower, and even if it entered a clutch, it could be based on baiting, and they could wait a bit for his retake.

Otherwise, sometimes after the front-line exchange ended, it would leave a 1vN clutch, which was too hard to handle.

The win rate of 2vN is much higher than 1vN.

apEX, on the other hand, believed that sometimes their in-game decisions were completely contrary to the ideas he set up at the start.

On the map Overpass, their map understanding, tactical reserves, and operational details were already much worse than Liquid's.

This led to them appearing as if they had made many, many mistakes, with various problems occurring frequently.

During the review time, they discussed one map for a full two hours.

Often, they would review for a while, the team would start arguing, and they would calm down for a while.

After a while, when the anger subsided, they would come back to discuss, and after a while, they would start arguing again.

It wasn't until the second half of the night, when the entire team was exhausted, that they finished this review.

The road to becoming stronger is often not smooth sailing.

Xu Beifang reached out to the bedside to pick up his phone; it was already 9:00 AM Sydney time.

Staying up late had slightly disrupted his biological clock, but since he was already awake, he had no intention of continuing to sleep.

Picking up his phone, he began to check the schedule notifications from XTQZZZ on the chat app.

Before the review yesterday, they had mentioned it, but now he only felt his head was a bit fuzzy, and those things were hard to recall.

After checking, Xu Beifang found that today, except for needing to watch an NIP match together around 6:00 PM, there was no other special content.

While checking the information in the group, he also saw the message Danking had sent him.

Xu Beifang looked at the time above.

"This Danking is really a night owl; it's past 3:00 AM in the country and he's still not sleeping."

Clicking on Danking's chat, he saw the following message:

Danking: What's up with your interview today? Do you understand what human relationships and worldly wisdom are?

Danking: I clearly have many highlight reels, you little hater!

Perhaps not feeling satisfied, Danking sent another message at 4:00 AM: Xu Beifang, you damn well deserve to die!

Seeing this, the dizziness and headache Xu Beifang felt in the morning instantly disappeared, and a pleasant smile hung on his face.

He typed a reply on his phone: Lies don't hurt people; the truth is the sharpest blade.

After replying to the message, Xu Beifang had originally intended to put down his phone and get up.

He didn't expect Danking to have any reply; after all, since he wasn't asleep past 4:00 AM, he was probably sleeping like a pig now.

As a result, just as he locked the screen, he heard a message notification sound.

Danking: Fine, fine, fine! So that's how you want to play!

Danking: Wait until we run into each other at a major tournament later, see how I crush you! By then, Danking's highlight reel from one match will be more than your entire career!

Danking: I'll smash your head in, you little B!!

Facing Tie Dan's threatening remarks, Xu Beifang didn't care at all, and even wanted to laugh a little.

He calmly found a very old stock image in his sticker collection.

Anxious! (Jerry Special Edition)

After sending the message, Xu Beifang felt refreshed.

He could always find fun in Tie Dan; he didn't expect to see Tie Dan's highlight clips in that Betway game yesterday either.

And he was telling the truth; although Danking has good performances in small matches, the gold content is relatively high, and there really aren't many eye-catching highlight reels.

To use a joke from the fans, Xu Beifang's career highlight reels combined could be longer than Tie Dan's professional match duration.

Of course, this is just an exaggeration.

Xu Beifang's highlights aren't as many as imagined either.

Seeing Danking's highlights last night, Xu Beifang just thought about teasing him a bit for the sake of the show's effect.

The result was obvious; the show's effect was quite good.

At the very least, Tie Dan had already started to get anxious.

However, he believed that although Tie Dan was a bit anxious for the time being, he wouldn't have too many thoughts about this matter.

He was just teasing him on the surface and stating the facts.

If Tie Dan couldn't even handle this, then he shouldn't be playing professionally.

After all, compared to the words of those professional haters on the forums, his way of saying it was already very gentle.

After hampus lost a match, he received over 50 death threats after the match.

The attacks on NIKO in the forums have never stopped for a single day.

After teasing Danking, Xu Beifang was in a great mood and sat on the bed, simply browsing the forums to wake himself up.

After a night of discussion, everyone was talking about the match content of the IEM Sydney group stage.

【Vitality is really strong in this tournament, killing their way into the playoffs with a 3-0 record】

【It's indeed exaggerated; they almost 2-0'd Liquid yesterday. I thought another century-level comeback was going to be staged】

【Xiao Xu's state is fierce; he suppressed Ji Ge throughout this BO3, and Liquid didn't have a good sniper rifle. Liquid only had 8 sniper kills in the entire BO3, while Zywoo had 19 with the sniper. The gap is not just a little bit large】

【To be honest, that Inferno match was satisfying to watch. Beizige had a four-kill comeback, Zywoo immediately followed up with one, and I still remember the confused expression on Liquid's faces when they called a timeout】

【There was really no way; people were stunned. The opponent had two consecutive four-kills; how can you play against that?】

This Liquid team has a large number of fans.

Although the '18 Boston Major was a nightmare for Fazeclan, it let North American fans see the hope of CS rising.

It's just that they didn't expect that the dark horse C9, having just lifted the Major trophy, would immediately scatter in all directions.

North American fans were still fantasizing about the future, and the hope was directly shattered.

Now that Liquid is rising again, they naturally want to see this team reach the top and become the strongest in the world.

Not to mention, the personal charm of the director has brought a huge number of fans to this team.

As a result, they didn't expect that after the Major, running into Vitality, they only struggled slightly, and even their strongest map was almost turned around in one wave.

Xu Beifang continued to scroll down and also learned about the subsequent situation of the group stage from other people's discussions.

Renegades' state continued to decline, and in the second round of the loser's bracket, their opponent was Mouz.

Renegades had no one standing up to carry, and Karrigan successfully used tactics to educate them, killing Renegades directly on two maps.

Faze was eventually eliminated. Without NIKO on the team, they could still play against some unranked teams, but when running into first-tier teams, 'the coach is warming up' wasn't enough to look at, but the fans didn't have such high requirements for them.

After all, it wasn't the full lineup of the primary team, so not being eliminated in the first round was already quite good.

And the group leader of Group B was produced between NRG and MBIR.

Boombl4 and Tarik showed their ability as excellent riflemen in this match, with an average rating of 1.61 on two maps, beating the Brazilians to a pulp.

Starting from the third day of the group stage, the number of eliminated teams began to increase.

Invisibly, it also made the atmosphere of the schedule tense.

After a rough scan of the battle situation of each team, Xu Beifang put down his phone and began to climb out of bed.

For Vitality, qualifying as the group leader of Group A was slightly unexpected.

But having just won the StarSeries, their desire was very inflated now.

Since they qualified as the group leader, they would start from the semi-finals in the playoffs.

Then they certainly hoped to be able to go further.

Liquid hoped to use this tournament to clear away the haze of the Major defeat, NIP hoped to build confidence for the young people on the team, and FNATIC wanted to get their name back into everyone's view...

Everyone wanted to win the championship, but no matter who the opponent was, Vitality would go all out to find a way to lift this trophy.

Only by constantly building confidence in various matches and constantly making themselves stronger would they be qualified to challenge Astralis and snatch that Major trophy from their hands.

Xu Beifang put down his phone and began to climb out of bed.

The reward for being the group leader had already started to take effect.

Other teams were still making various preparations for today's match, while Vitality could leisurely watch the matches.

During this day, in addition to his daily training, he specifically went to the venue to cheer for Mouz, hoping that Mouz could qualify.

Before the match started, he joked at the player bench: "I hope to lend you my strength."

Then, in this match, Coldzera seemed to have awakened, blasting out an average rating of 1.88 in the BO3 confrontation, allowing Mouz to successfully qualify for the playoffs.

"Tell me! Did you chant some spell before the match to give me such a hot hand?"

After the match ended, several Vitality members and Mouz members strolled toward the lounge, and when talking about the match that had just ended, Coldzera was quite excited.

He felt that he had finally found some feeling, no longer playing timidly, and finally understood what Xu Beifang had said before, and his ideas for Banana Road were constantly changing.

In today's confrontation, he was constantly changing his playstyle on Banana Road, making it impossible for the opponent to predict, constantly getting kills, and making the opponent completely unable to defend Banana Road.

As for what spell, it was naturally a teasing remark.

"Speaking of which... your Vitality's state is really good, but the map pool still has quite big problems. In a BO3 match, it can be covered up, but if you enter the final, it might be very risky," Karrigan said, although he didn't have much contact with Xu Beifang, he knew what kind of personality he had from the mouths of ropz and Coldzera, so he spoke bluntly.

The relationship between Vitality and Mouz is very special now, because with Xu Beifang and ropz as the bridge, the two teams often play practice matches.

They even discuss things with each other when they encounter problems.

They only hide a hand in some special tactics, nothing more.

"No way, energy is limited. We can't improve the level of all 7 active duty maps at the same time; there will always be a focus," apEX said helplessly.

Vitality's map pool has not been particularly strong since the team was built.

Previously, on slightly niche maps like Overpass and Nuke, they could rely on individual performance to deal with some second-tier teams.

But against first-tier levels, teams that are truly good at these maps, there was really no way.

However, everything has its gains and losses.

Their level on these few maps is poor, but their combat power on the old three maps is quite strong.

"Too biased," Karrigan said. "If you weren't good at the old three maps before, that would be one thing, but you played the old three maps well before, and building new tactics around the old three maps again doesn't improve the overall level much."

Perhaps because Mouz is a team that is starting from scratch, he prefers to pull the team's strength up as quickly as possible, so he values balanced development more.

apEX, however, shook his head; he didn't approve of this philosophy.

After all, Vitality being able to become the world's second in about half a year, the team's powerful Inferno was indispensable.

Biased students have the advantages of biased students.

If they can choose their own map, then Vitality won't fear any team.

"You winning the StarSeries actually had a large component of luck. After all, NAVI's map pool is highly similar to yours, and they were even countered by you, but this confrontation with Liquid exposed the shortcomings of your Overpass, and Nuke should also have been seen through quite a bit. It will be very difficult to win the championship this time."

Karrigan didn't classify his own team as a championship-contending team.

Because his goal for himself was quite clear; this IEM Sydney was just for training troops.

That's why in the first round, they deliberately sought to play Vitality's Inferno; they just wanted to fight against such a strong team and accumulate experience.

They are still in a rising period, and unless the players' state explodes, it's impossible to compete for such an S-tier tournament championship.

Vitality has a good hope of winning this time, but it's not particularly stable.

Because several teams in Group B seem to be particularly good at these niche maps, and in a BO5 match, Vitality can only ban one, so their pressure is still very great.

Karrigan spoke proudly, and Coldzera also echoed a few words on the side.

Xu Beifang curled his lips while listening: "Karrigan's vision is indeed vicious, but our Vitality is not without any preparation. When it truly reaches the final, you will know."

"Really?"

"When have I ever lied to anyone?" Xu Beifang shrugged, "You will see that scene."

I've been updating 10,000 words a day for a week; today I've entered the sage time, and the update is a bit lagging...