Nip plays expectations but still falls before the championship candidate.

The leading candidate for the championship-Spirit-continued the perfect series of matches at PGL Astana when beating Ninjas In Pyjamas 2-0 in the quarterfinals.

After the easy 13-8 victory on NIP's Map Pick Map, the training of Marco "⁠snappi⁠" Pfeiffer surprised when he took the 10-3 lead on Dust2-Spirit's forte map. In 2025, only Falcons and Vitality were the only two teams defeating the collective of coach Sergey "⁠hally⁠" Shavaev on this map, but Nip almost wrote his name on that list.

However, the Triple Kill with Myroslav's Five-seven "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia has turned the situation, and Spirit set up a firmly defensive wall on the CT to maintain the unbeaten chain in Kazakhstan, to the semi-finals to meet Furia tomorrow.

This was Spirit's eighth map in a row, the team is aiming to turn this $ 1.25 million award into their own stage when they are the only top 4 team. So far, everything is favorable.

Complete task: Nip climb to 25th rank VRS thanks to the top 8

Ninjas in Pyjamas came to Astana with the goal of making the most of the only chance to attend a Tier-One LAN prize this year.

And they did - despite the unable to end Dust2. The Fragadelphia championship brought them to 46th rank on the VRS rankings before the tournament, but the victories against Virtus.pro, Hotu and G2 helped them suddenly reached the Playoff round and climbed 19 more steps on Valve's rankings.

This is clearly a success for the team that has struggled over the past year with online qualifiers. The approach to the victory on Dust2 is not a pity but a reward - and is a testament that Artem "⁠R1NKLE⁠" Moroz is capable of playing at this level.
Chopper: "We have not achieved the highest performance"

Obviously Spirit and everyone in Kazakhstan expect them to raise the cup on Sunday. The qualification distance between the remaining teams is so large that Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov can honestly share with James "⁠Banks⁠" BANKS that the team "has not achieved the highest form" - despite winning all 8 maps so far in Astana.

The remaining question is whether there is any team that can make it difficult for Spirit like Ninjas in Pyjamas who used to do it on Dust2 with a almost comeback.