The Roobet Cup 2023 Semi-Finals are left in the dust, with sixteen teams now whittled down to just two. Aurora faced off against Ukrainian outfit Monte, while Virtus.pro needed a win over FURIA to secure their place in the Grand Final.

Both matches went the distance in the Semi-Finals of the Roobet Cup 2023, needing three maps to separate these sides. But who won on the day? Let’s take a look.

Monte Crush Aurora Dreams

It was all looking so promising for Aurora. After impressive wins against Eternal Fire, Heroic, and BIG during the Roobet Cup 2023, they were primed to go all the way here. They even took the first map against Monte, albeit in a close 13:10 Anubis.

Credit: ESLCS on Twitter

It proved too good to be true for Aurora. Monte went on to reverse-sweep the team on Nuke and Ancient, with most of the roster showing up in the fragging department. It was only really DemQQ who struggled across the series, bottom-fragging for Monte in maps one and three.

We can debate about the importance of the Roobet Cup 2023 among CS2 tournaments all day, but Monte won’t care. They’ve been grinding so much over the past year, and a victory in the Grand Final would give them the fruits of their labor – their biggest prize pool to date.

Virtus.pro Outsmart FURIA

It was a similar story in FURIA vs Virtus.pro. FalleN and his squad managed to take the first map over Jame’s Virtus.pro roster, but a strong fightback saw the Russian team come out on top with a reverse sweep.

Credit: ESLCS on Twitter

It’s hard to point to one individual, or one specific moment that won Virtus.pro the series. They’re a team that plays a very specific brand of Counter-Strike, and stick to their guns, win or lose. Every one of the five Virtus.pro players dropped 40+ kills across the series, so there was no one truly underperforming here. It was just a classic Virtus.pro performance we’ve come to expect by now, for better or for worse.

It’s interesting to note that we’re approaching twelve months since most of this roster won the IEM Rio Major 2022 under the Outsiders moniker. After a ton of grinding the online circuit, Jame looks ready to win again. Tomorrow’s Grand Final between Monte and Virtus.pro represents the first time these organizations have ever met on the server, and it’s sure to be a banger.