NAVI reverse sweep PARIVISION to reach IEM Beijing semi-finals

Natus Vincere battled back from a Mirage defeat to beat PARIVISION 2-1 and reach the semi-finals of IEM Beijing, according to HLTV.

PARIVISION took the opener 16-14 on Mirage before NAVI responded with a 13-9 win on Inferno and a 13-10 victory on Ancient to close out the series.

AWPer Ihor "w0nderful" Zhdanov was the standout performer across all three maps, putting up consistent numbers that HLTV described as miles ahead of anyone else on the server.

NAVI's veto strategy took a deliberate risk, opening with Mirage despite it being the weakest map in their seven-map pool, reasoning that it is also difficult territory for PARIVISION.

The gamble nearly backfired. Dzhami "Jame" Ali and Ivan "zweih" Gogin led a PARIVISION T-side that built a 9-3 half after NAVI had won the pistol and opened 3-0, with Jame repeatedly reading NAVI's offensive setups.

PARIVISION looked set to close out Mirage on their own pistol, but w0nderful matched Jame's first-half output before Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen made two pivotal plays late in the half to force overtime. Vladislav "xiELO" Lysov then won a key T-side round in OT, but zweih's late CT-side surge handed PARIVISION the map.

Inferno followed a similar pattern, with PARIVISION racing to a 4-0 start before w0nderful again intervened, picking up multi-kills in nearly every CT round NAVI won. A second-half offensive call from Aleksib, backed by entry kills from Drin "makazze" Shaqiri, levelled the series.

The win keeps NAVI's late-season turnaround on track. Having previously been prone to early tournament exits, the side has now reached back-to-back playoff stages, a shift HLTV attributes in large part to w0nderful's recent form.

NAVI's run through the group stage also claimed a higher-profile scalp. According to Esports Insider, the side eliminated Falcons in the Group A lower-bracket final, recovering from a narrow loss on the opening map to dominate the rest of the series, including a 12-0 T-side half on the Mirage decider. w0nderful went 25-4 on Inferno in that match before b1t took over on Mirage.

The result left Falcons sharing seventh-to-eighth place with Team Liquid, who were eliminated 2-1 by BetBoom after zorte's ace in round 23 of their own Mirage decider settled the series, Esports Insider reported.

Elsewhere in the bracket, The MongolZ ended FURIA's seven-game winning streak to reach the semi-finals, recovering from a dropped opening map and winning Cache — FURIA's own pick, and a map The MongolZ had lost on in each of their previous four attempts — before closing out the series. FURIA, who had not lost since winning PGL Masters Bucharest, now face BetBoom in the quarter-finals. MOUZ also secured a semi-final place after going unbeaten in Group B.

PARIVISION's elimination by NAVI means the two sides will not meet again in the quarter-finals as originally scheduled; instead NAVI advance directly to the last four.

IEM Beijing, an ESL Pro Tour Masters event held at the Bloomage Biotech Biohyalux ECM Arena, is running its single-elimination playoffs from 6-8 November with best-of-three quarter-finals and a third-place match, and a best-of-five grand final. The $1,250,000 prize pool is split into $300,000 for players and $950,000 in club share, with the champions set to earn $360,000, Esports Insider reported. The tournament serves as the last major event before the PGL Major in Singapore, which opens on 24 November.