The list of things you shouldn’t do as a pro player in CS:GO is relatively short: Don’t cheat. Seriously, don’t cheat. Don’t match fix.

So one does wonder very much what Perfecto must have thought, apart from “for the lulz”, when he potentially made a “spot-fix” during IEM Katowice.

Granted it’s all circumstantial evidence, but it looks pretty bad for the Russian support player. Here’s what happened:

• A Russian bettor put $20 on odds 501:1 for NAVI to buy an M249 during IEM Katowice
• The tweet got attention from one of the Russian-speaking talent at MainCast
• Perfecto, out of the blue, bought a M249 against FURIA for no apparent reason

The full story can be found here, but the main points look damning enough as it is. The M249 buy didn’t have any influence on the round, and Perfecto could have just randomly mis-bought. After all he wouldn’t be the first pro to do so.

We prefer to believe that Perfecto is just the victim of a set of circumstances coming together, but it really does raise the question if NAVI’s own sponsor, should offer prop-bets like that, on games with their sponsored team. Just a thought.

We... we might have been too early on the ZywOo ending his Katowice curse call.

Just before we get into that, if you want more details on any game in particular - here’s a link to HLTV’s results page for the event.

He put up his worst map of his LAN career as Gambit cruised past Vitality, thanks to one of the best performances of the last few years from Ax1Le. The teenager waltzed into Inferno taking every aim duel he could find, and winning his fair share.

That put Vitality out, who shared the ignominy of being ousted by the CIS onliners with NiP. The Swedes might have beaten Gambit earlier on, but Gambit won it when it mattered to send NiP home, and move on to the arena.

Astralis nicked a win off of resident scone-munchers fnatic to send the English back home early, but fell short as they had to play NiKo with tournament life on the line. In a game that had multiple amazing rounds on Dust 2 alone, G2 outlasted Astralis to inflict a 16-1 on them on the decider.

That’s a paddlin’.

NiKo has been absolutely cooking, and is currently averaging a 1.5 rating at the event. The second highest is stavn at 1.35, for reference. He’s even able to clutch from heaven nowadays.

MOUZ were slapped out of contention by NiP, while FURIA ran G2 close, but without a big round smoking thing.

Heroic are immediately in the semi-finals, after they smashed Virtus.pro in the seeding game. We’d be lying if we said we were overjoyed to see one of the rosters with minimal changes in the top four instead of one of the new, flashy ones.

Joining them is... actually, you know what. We’re not going to spoil this one for you, because NaVi vs FaZe was a classic. If you’ve been unable to catch much CS this week for whatever reason, we’ve linked the VOD for the game here.

Grab a drink, some snacks and enjoy it. If you really want to know the result, you can click the link at the start of the article.

If you’re wondering who went out last, it was of course Team Liquid (NA), OG (cursed) and Copenhagen Flames (we had them in the name of the podcast episode). After all that talk of CPH Flames being a LAN team, and nexa having an instant impact, everything went wrong.

For Team Liquid, nothing went wrong. This is exactly what you expect when you pick up shox to an NA team.

With the group stage behind us, there are only six teams left at IEM Katowice.

G2 clinched a spot Sunday in a great best-of-three with Astralis, with NiKo once again proving he’s one of the best player’s in the world. A nice 1.69 rating with a positive record on all three maps secured G2’s spot in their first LAN playoffs with their new and improved roster.

Meanwhile, NaVi proved that FaZe really might be cursed. They had at one point a 15-11 lead on map three and yet, as has historically been true for the FaZe organization, they were unable to close out the game and now they’ll have to play in the quarterfinals next week against Gambit.

Looking forward towards that game, Gambit will be looking to continue their 2-0 streak after being both Vitality and NIP in that fashion this week. The CIS lineup, still ranked second in the world, looks strong and sh1ro is still scary good.

G2, meanwhile, will be heading to a showdown with the third CIS representatives, Virtus.pro. If NiKo keeps dropping 1.50+ series, a potential semifinal bout between him and NaVi could be the series of the tournament.

On the other hand, Virtus.pro is nothing if not good at upsets and weird victories, and Jame has been excellent so far this tournament. Not NiKo excellent, but good enough that VP shouldn’t be counted out yet.

The second team with a secured semifinal spot, Heroic, certainly will be looking to punch above their class against either FaZe or Gambit. Heroic had perhaps the easier path, beating a cursed Vitality and a struggling OG, but they did have to claim a 2-1 over G2 in order to actually make it through groups without a loss.

All in all, it’s a field of the top teams in the world. Besides Vitality’s curse rearing its head once more, it would be difficult to think of another team who would be expected to make this stage.

But how cursed is FaZe? Will Navi continue their LAN streak? Will NiKo finally have a bad series? For answers to those questions, we’re gonna all have to wait till next week.

• It’s not quite the same cheat code, but this “minigame” in CS:GO’s main page is pretty funky. Maybe it’s a clue for Half-Life 3?
• And today on “out of pocket ESL host moments”: Wanko and maui “one-eyed” snake.
• We know it’s not really CS related, but we feel like we have to be the granddad for you guys right now. Go outside, open a window, do your laundry.
• Look: we know that for some of us not being able to play MM would be a good thing. But we’d like to at least have a choice in it. Valve pls fix.
• Some intern somewhere at either Nemiga or Finest is really regretting pushing off that transfer paperwork... Like, seriously. How does that happen?
• We talked about “the French Curse” already, but what about the end of the Xyp9x streak? The end of an era.