Rare Atom quiten the home crowd in Melbourne

Rare Atom completed the reverse-sweep to knock out home-team VERTEX in the Group B Elimination game following a three-map thriller.

First up in the best-of-three elimination game was VERTEX's pick of Vertigo. Rare Atom took the first pistol starting on the CT side but it was VERTEX who had a strong T half, ending the first half 9-6.

Rare Atom won the second pistol and didn't take long to tie up the score at 10-10 even after losing to the force buy. With Rare Atom threatening to make a comeback, VERTEX made sure there were no more hiccups as they closed out the map 16-10 with ADDICT ending the opening map with a 1.58 rating.

The second map was on Rare Atom's pick of Inferno with the Asian squad fighting for survival as they were one map loss away from elimination. Rare Atom took the pistol on their pick and were 5-0 up before VERTEX won their first round on the CT side. VERTEX managed to secure seven rounds in a row and ended the first half with a 8-7 lead. Rare Atom and VERTEX traded rounds in the second half but eventually it was a complete team performance from Rare Atom as they secured Inferno 16-13 to keep themselves alive in the tournament.

The decider was on Overpass, a map that on paper favoured the home team. Rare Atom secured the pistol on the decider and managed a total of 9 rounds in the first half. VERTEX managed to get the pistol and the following in the second half to keep their hopes alive and pz came in with an incredible 1v2 clutch that saw him stick a 10 second defuse in the smoke but Rare Atom on the back of strong performances from Mercury and Moseyuh were just too hot to handle for VERTEX, who eventually went down 16-10. Mercury ended Overpass with an incredible rating of 1.74 while Moseyuh finished with 1.40.

ESL Challenger Melbourne 2023

Bo3

VERTEX

1 - 2

Rare Atom

All maps

VERTEX	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 2.0
Jared 'hazr' O'Bree	52 - 54	-2	75.8	79.0%	1.17
Christian 'ADDICT' Pendleton	59 - 53	+6	78.9	69.1%	1.12
Jordan 'pz' White	48 - 52	-4	58.5	60.5%	0.88
Toby 'BRACE' Barnes	45 - 55	-10	60.0	74.1%	0.85
Liam 'malta' Schembri	41 - 62	-21	67.8	60.5%	0.81

Rare Atom	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 2.0
Jingxiang 'Mercury' Wang	64 - 55	+9	84.5	74.1%	1.20
Yi 'JamYoung' Yang	62 - 52	+10	76.9	81.5%	1.20
Qianhao 'Moseyuh' Chen	58 - 50	+8	84.5	70.4%	1.13
Andrew 'kaze' Khong	53 - 41	+12	64.7	76.5%	1.11
Zhuo 'advent' Liang	38 - 47	-9	60.3	77.8%	0.97