Choking is much more effective when you do it to your opponent’s best player, rather than yourself, it turns out.

MOUZ have always been the inexperienced, young ones. “They don’t know how to do it on stage,” “they’re still just kids,” and all that other nice stuff you say about a team who aren’t quite good enough. Let’s be frank: MOUZ have had a while now, and still choke on stage.

Fortunately for them, they came up against a younger, even more inexperienced team in The MongolZ, and one of their stars fell as flat as a witch’s bosom.

mzinho, the actual child, was infallible on stage but was let down by Senzu. ‘Til this point, Senzu had been superb, but he dropped a stinky 18-37 scoreline that ruined mzinho’s 46-kill haul to the point where the game was unwinnable.

And the dream was dead. Just like that. MOUZ knocked out The MongolZ 2-0. The first map went to OT, but there was no doubt who the better team was on Nuke.

Spirit were, on paper, one of the favourites for the tournament – but on vibes, they were basically nobody’s pick. The vibes were so bad. So so bad. They haven’t been able to beat NAVI in ages, and their form was, to be kind, patchy.

Since Katowice they haven’t really put together a scary run of form, but donk was still in the running for HLTV #1, and he had something to prove. If Spirit were going to do anything at this Major, it would be on donk’s back.

Well, f–cking obviously. But you know what we mean. It needed a donk carry in every game.

A casual 1.63 rating against Liquid, 47 kills in 46 rounds, 104.3 ADR and +22 for the, again, actual child, mashed Liquid into little pieces. It’s making us feel really old. Not as old as YEKINDAR suddenly seems, though.

The Latvian went from a hot-hand speed demon to a geriatric duel-loser in record time. We have no idea what is wrong with him, but he’s not the YEKINDAR we fell in love with.

Liquid almost mounted a comeback from way down on Anubis, but frankly, if you expected anything other than a 13-11 loss from Team Liquid, you haven’t watched much Team Liquid since… well, ever. Always the bridesmaid…

That leaves a tasty MOUZ vs. Donk matchup for the first semi, meaning at least four players will be in the Major final who have never been there before.