NAVI come back from a map down to beat PARIVISION and reach IEM Beijing semi-finals

Natus Vincere are through to the semi-finals of IEM Beijing after a hard-fought 2-1 win over PARIVISION. They lost Mirage 14-16, then won Inferno 13-9 and Ancient 13-10 to secure a top-four place.

A risky map choice on Mirage

Natus Vincere opened the series on Mirage, a map that is the weakest in their seven-map pool but also a difficult one for PARIVISION. The gamble did not pay off. The T side built a 3-0 start after winning the pistol round, and Dzhami 'Jame' Ali read the opposition's attacks well, finding openings throughout the gun rounds. Ivan 'zweih' Gogin added several high-impact rounds, and Natus Vincere led 9-3 at the half.

PARIVISION won their own pistol round on the attack and looked set to close the map comfortably. Ihor 'w0nderful' Zhdanov had other ideas. The 21-year-old AWPer matched his first-half performance with openings and multi-kills, and Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen made two important contributions late in the half to force overtime. Vladislav 'xiELO' Lysov took a key T-side round in overtime, and zweih finished the map with a late run on the CT side to give PARIVISION the lead in the series.

Natus Vincere level on Inferno

PARIVISION started strongly on Inferno as well, opening their T side with a 4-0 lead. Once again, w0nderful changed the course of the map. He recorded a multi-kill in almost every Natus Vincere CT round win. In the second half, Aleksib called an effective attack, and Drin 'makazze' Shaqiri provided a number of entry kills, allowing Natus Vincere to level the series with a comfortable win.

Decider on Ancient

Natus Vincere took a commanding early lead on Ancient with a proactive CT approach, finding openings in Middle and pushing through B. PARIVISION recovered in the first half through solo-carry rounds from Evgenii 'FL1T' Lebedev and Abay 'HObbit' Khassenov, which stopped the scoreline from getting worse for them.

The second half was the closest of the series, with each team winning rounds before the other adjusted. PARIVISION relied on FL1T's impact, while Natus Vincere turned to Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy. It was b1t who came through, winning two entries on a B rush to close out the map and send Natus Vincere into the semi-finals.

Individual performances

w0nderful led all players across the series with 64 kills and 41 deaths, an ADR of 85.2 and a rating of 1.54. For PARIVISION, zweih posted 47 kills and 47 deaths with a rating of 1.12, while Jame had 48 kills against 38 deaths and a rating of 1.03. For Natus Vincere, b1t finished with 48 kills, 44 deaths and a rating of 1.12.