Toxjq busts through Cooller

Upper Bracket Semifinals: Johan "toxjq" Quick vs Anton "Cooller" Singov 

The upper bracket semi-finals came down to two players who are very familiar with each other from past encounters - Toxic and cooller. Monsoon was the first map to be played, and Cooller took an early control of the mega health from Toxjq, forcing him to settle for the Yellow Armor. This early advantage for cooller would lead to the opening frag of the match at 12:30 with a Lightning Gun fight for the Mega spawn. The next MH spawn would prove costly for cooller however as Toxic would rocket jump up to steal it and open a 8 kill streak over the next 5 minutes, leading Cooller by the score 8-2. With his six frag margain, toxjq opted to control the Lightning Gun away from cooller for the most part, ultimately stopping Cooller from mounting a full attack against his superior healthstack and increasing his lead. Cooller would not be able to break the control of toxjq until the twelve minute mark, leaving too large of a lead to overcome in the final three minutes of Monsoon. Toxjq would win the 1st map 25-8.

The second map came down to coollers map choice, Phrantic. An early red armor spawn for cooller would prove to be quite an advantage for the Russian in grabbing an early 4-0 lead. Cooller's agressive pursuit of spawn frags would lose him control however, as Toxjq would drop down from the mid-level infront of cooller to score his first frag of the match, and ultimately a lead of 8-4. Cooller, similar to Avek, was not able to mount a strong attack on Toxjq's control of the Upper Yellow Armor until the 5 minute mark. Cooller would surprise Toxic with a Lightning Gun attack at the upper level and climb his way back into the match to tie the game at 13.

The match seemed to be a back and forth trade off of control between the two players until a very crucial fight at the 4 minute mark. Cooller stayed aggressive off his spawn with the MG taking toxjq down to 8 health, but he was unable to finish him before Toxjq could replenish his health and armor pools. This would allow Toxjq to spread his lead to 20-13 leaving cooller a giant uphill battle for the last 3 minutes of the map. Even with a very strong aggressive push towards the end of the map this would be a lead that Cooller would not be able to fight back from Toxjq would retreat for the remainder of the match and pull out a narrow victory of 22-19. This would leave toxjq in the Upper Bracket Finals to face the winner of Cypher and DaHanG.

"It was easy to beat Cooller on Monsoon but much harder on Phrantic" said toxjq his victory. "He has the same kind of playing style as av3k except Cooller makes less mistakes. Av3k keeps on rusing hoping to hit something." On his upcoming upper bracket finals match vs DaHanG, "I know he likes the new maps, and those are tough to play for me. I won't underestimate him, but I expect to win."