Movistar Riders’ CS:GO AWPer Antonio “MartinezSa” Martinez used his knife to finish off FURIA’s in-game leader Andrei “arT” Piovezan today while he was defusing the bomb in the first round of ESL Pro League season 17‘s Group B mid-bracket semifinal.
The Spanish AWPer was left in a one-vs-two situation in which he had to defend the C4 against Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato and arT in the A bombsite of Inferno. MartinezSa waited for KSCERATO to peek at him from Short and got the kill with his Glock to turn it into a one-vs-one against arT. As soon as the FURIA captain started defusing the C4 inside the smoke, MartinezSA pulled his knife out and prevented the C4 from being defused to secure the first round of the best-of-three series. Ironically, arT got a taste of his own medicine as he’s used to getting knife kills himself every now and then.
This play might look dangerous for beginners, but if you know the CT is defusing the C4 inside of the smoke in the pistol round, it’s better to knife him since it’s likely you’ll whiff some Glock shots, giving the CT a better chance to defuse the bomb in five seconds if he has a defuse kit.
Getting a knife kill in CS:GO also awards the player $1,500 in the next round, which helps their economy in the long run, especially an AWPer like MartinezSa who must buy the AWP for $4,750 in multiple rounds during one half. The reward for getting a knife kill is higher than every other kill reward you can get in CS:GO.
Even though Movistar Riders had a great start on Inferno and won the first half 10-5 on the T-side, they couldn’t close out the match on the defensive side. FURIA clawed their way back into the game and ran away with a 16-13 victory thanks to KSCERATO’s heroics. The Brazilian superstar had 22 kills and only 12 deaths throughout the 29 rounds.
