In a playoff match at the EPIC League CIS 2021 tournament, Gambit defeated Akuma, stopping its surprise advancement, and thus qualified for the grand finals. Gambit won convincingly with a score of 2 – 0 on Mirage and Overpass. In previous matches Akuma successfully played Mirage and so decided to choose this card again, but it did not help to cope with the leader of the world ranking: the draw of the card ended with the score 16 : 5. The second map was Overpass, and on it Akuma played almost as tentatively, managing to win only 8 rounds. Commenting on his team's victory, Vladislav «nafany» Gorshkov noted that Akuma always uses roughly the same tactics, which allowed them to prepare for the match.
Nevertheless, Akuma's participation in the tournament does not end here: on Sunday evening it will play a match against Virtus.pro, the winner of which will face Gambit in the grand finals. The unexpected success of the Ukrainian team has already raised doubts about its integrity. Some commenters have suggested that Akuma is using cheats. At the same time, several players have come out in defense of the team. For example, Mikhail «Dosia» Stolyarov and Mikhail «Kane» Blagin mentioned in their comments that they do not see any suspicious activities on the match recordings. Akuma player Dmitry «SENSEi» Shvorak said that he is ready for any checks and is fully open to cooperation with the tournament organizers.