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Semi Final Previews - IEM Rio 2023

The IEM Rio 2023 Semi Finals are here, but which teams will be advancing for a chance at winning the tournament?

Charlie Cater

Semi Final Previews - IEM Rio 2023
Semi Final Previews - IEM Rio 2023 /

IEM Rio 2023 has more than delivered, with a great atmosphere accompanied by great matches, the event has been incredible so far. Today, the Semi Final matches take place, with just two games and the winning teams advancing to the Grand Finals. Cloud9 takes on Vitality, and Heroic faces NaVi in two extremely hard to call matches. However, here’s everything we know about each team, and who we could be seeing in the Final.

Cloud9 vs Vitality

Cloud9 have been one of the favourites for almost every single Counter-Strike event since they picked up the Gambit roster. The team consistently reaches the latter stages of every tournament, and can surprise any team at any time. The team of Sergey “Ax1le” Rykhtorov, Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov, Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov, Abay “HObbit” Khassenov, and Timur “buster” Tulepov are currently on a three match win streak, defeating MiBR, OG and Furia so far at IEM Rio 2023.

However, Cloud9 are taking on a dangerous team in Vitality. Vitality not only features the dominant AWPer, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, but also four, three and one time Major winners in Peter “Dupreeh” Rasmussen, Emil “Magisk” Reif, and Dan “apEX” Madesclaire. It’s the young impact player Lotan “Spinx” Giladi who rounds out the roster that are currently on a four match win streak. But it’s the people that they’ve beaten that is impressive, taking down Intel Grand Slam winners FaZe Clan in a 2-0 sweep, and an insanely hot BIG in a 2-0 sweep last night.

Cloud9 will always be competitive, but this Vitality squad seems to be on another level at the moment.

Heroic vs Natus Vincere

Heroic are the #3 HLTV ranked team in the world, and they have had spells of dominance in CS:GO. The Danish roster is led by Casper “cadiaN” Møller and he is joined by Martin “stavn” Lund, René “TeSeS” Madsen, Rasmus “sjuush” Beck and Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard. Currently on a three match win streak, Heroic took down home team Furia last night in the Quarter Finals. This makes them the villains of IEM Rio to the crowd, but they don’t seem to be affected by that at all. Stavn has been leading the line in ADR, finishing last nights 2-1 victory over Furia with an 89.4 ADR. If he can keep that up, this could be a close match.

NaVi on the other hand are just an incredible roster. Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy, Denis “electroNic” Sharipov, Andrii “npl” Kukharskyi and Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy are currently undefeated in six matches, and dominated Heroic in a 2-0 sweep last time they met. NaVi booked their spot in the Semi Finals with a 2-0 victory over BIG, where S1mple dominated, finishing with a 1.42 HLTV rating.

This is a similar match to the other Semi Final. Heroic are a great team, and could definitely compete. However, it’s going to take something special to take down NaVi.


IEM Rio 2023 Semi Finals get underway at 11 am ET today, April 22, with both matches being streamed on the ESL CS:GO Twitch Channel.

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Charlie Cater
CHARLIE CATER

Charlie has been a freelance esports writer since May 2020, primarily focusing on Call of Duty but has written about anything and everything! He is always getting involved and looking to learn everything about esports, but is also a massive football (soccer) fan and travels around the country to watch his home team Norwich City.