Ninjas in Pyjamas beat SK Gaming to win 'CS:GO' champinoship
Ninjas in Pyjamas' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team is on a roll.
Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated SK Gaming to win the Intel Extreme Masters Oakland CS:GO championship, becoming the first CS:GO team to win three premier ($250,000 or higher prize pool) tournaments in 2016. NiP took home $128,000 after beating the reigning Major champions.
Both teams played very well in Oakland, ending with a close 2-1 finals match. NiP's roster was back in full force with the return of Jacob "Pyth" Mourujärvi, who came to the tournament after a three-month injury hiatus and helped his team take first place with a stellar performance.
SK Gaming showed why it picked the first map Train, dominating NiP 16-4 to take the early lead. Train tends to be one of SK Gaming's best maps, and NiP regularly has trouble grabbing a win there.
The next two maps made for much closer games. Ninjas in Pyjamas ended up taking both Cache and Cobblestone 16-14, just managing to edge out SK by winning late rounds in both games.
SK Gaming's Gabriel "Fallen" Toledo and Fernando "Fer" Alvarenga both had subpar performances in the best-of-three against NiP, while NiP's Pyth and Patrik "F0rest" Lindberg had very strong performances in the finals.
Since winning the last Major at ESL One Cologne in July, SK Gaming has not placed first in a single big tournament, losing twice to Virtus.pro for third/fourth and taking second to Cloud9 at the ESL Pro League Season 4 finals.
