Cypher and
rapha play today in the
250 FPS QL League group stage. It’s also their first official Quake Live match since
July 2014 (
QuakeCon 2014).
Quake Live didn’t always give us this matchup too often, but when it happened, it usually happened at the biggest LANs — QuakeCon, IEM, DreamHack — and very often late in the bracket.
Below is a clean recap of their Quake Live meetings from 2008 to 2014.
Quick facts:
- Head-to-head series: 8:7 in favor of Cypher
- Map score: 26:24 in favor of Cypher
- QuakeCon (Quake Live) titles: 5:4 in favor of rapha
- No other player has won a QuakeCon Quake Live title
- Cypher and rapha have never met in a Quake Live QuakeCon grand final
This was the first QuakeCon in Quake Live — the duel map pool included
Almost Lost, and the duel time limit was 15 minutes.
Cypher lost the first map,
Lost World (back when the item layout was the old one — Red Armor and the Lightning Gun were swapped, and only one Yellow Armor on the map), but then won
Almost Lost and
Campgrounds.
Cypher went on to win the tournament, while
rapha lost in the lower bracket to future finalist
ZeRo4.
The second QuakeCon in Quake Live history again featured an unusual map in the pool —
Trinity. On the way to the upper bracket final,
Cypher beat
k1llsen and
stermy, while
rapha beat
DaHanG and
Spart1e. In their head-to-head, the first map went to the Belarusian player, but the next two went to
rapha.
Cypher later lost to
Spart1e in the lower bracket final — and
Spart1e came within one map of beating
rapha in the grand final, leading 2:0 before losing 2:3.
The grand final of the first major
Intel Extreme Masters event ended with a
rapha win. The maps were fairly close:
rapha took
Bloodrun 4:2 and
Furious heights 7:4,
Cypher won
Campgrounds 14:5, and on the last map,
House of Decay,
rapha won 5:3.
The tournament used an unusual format: twelve players were split into two groups, and three players advanced from each group.
rapha lost to
Cooller in the group stage and finished second.
Cypher won his group. That put
rapha and
Cypher into one of the semifinal matchups.
Cypher started strongly, winning
Lost World and
Bloodrun, but then lost three maps in a row and sent
rapha to the final. In the third-place match,
Cypher also lost to
Av3k, while
rapha beat
Cooller 3:1 in the grand final.
The two players met twice during the bracket. First,
Cypher beat
rapha convincingly 2:0 in the Upper Bracket Final on
Furious heights and
Hektik.
rapha dropped to the lower bracket, where he beat
strenx 2:1.
However, in the grand final the match followed a completely different script. Despite having a map advantage,
Cypher couldn’t close it out. The deciding map (
Hektik) was a brutal fight and ended 7:6 in favor of
rapha.
Like the previous world finals, the event featured twelve players split into two groups — but this time
Cypher and
rapha ended up in the same group. Their match happened in the last round of the group stage: both players came in with two wins and two losses, so only one of them could advance to the playoff bracket.
rapha won a very tight series and went on to win the tournament.
The tournament followed the standard format: players were split into groups, and the playoff bracket was built from the group results.
Cypher cruised through his group, while
rapha stumbled against
strenx and finished second.
Cypher beat rapha fairly comfortably, dropping only the first map.
The grand final was a best-of-three, and there wasn’t much of a fight — Cypher won 2:0 and took the title.
On the way to the grand final,
rapha faced serious resistance from
Spart1e (3:2) and
noctis (3:1), while
Cypher beat
strenx (3:0) and
Cooller (3:1). The final was played on
Cypher’s terms:
rapha won the first map by one frag, but the next three were controlled confidently by the Belarusian player.
A second DreamHack in a row was again shaped by
rapha and
Cypher. And once again,
Cypher looked stronger throughout the tournament, dropping only one map in the group stage (against
Spart1e). In the final,
Cypher won 3:0.
The tournament didn’t feature many of the usual names — for example,
Cypher played
Sc00t in the semifinal, and
dkt and
matr0x reached the top 8. The grand final itself was fairly close:
rapha won the first two maps by one frag (
Bloodrun 6:5,
Toxicity 7:6), then closed the tournament comfortably on
Lost World.
So far, this is the only official online match between the two players. It was the season finale — before that, players had competed in a series of FACEIT events and earned points to qualify. From North America,
DaHanG was supposed to go (he had the most points), but he couldn’t travel to Europe. In the group stage,
Cypher beat
rapha 2:1; in the playoffs, he beat
Cooller 3:2, but lost the grand final to
evil 0:3.
rapha also lost to
evil by the same score in semifinal, 0:3.
This time the lineup was much stronger. On the way to the final,
rapha beat
fazz,
DaHanG, and
evil, and also faced
Spart1e in the group stage.
Cypher had
DaHanG and
k1llsen in his group, then beat
etty,
Spart1e, and
Av3k in the playoffs. The grand final was a tight series — the players traded maps, but the deciding map (
Sinister) went to the Belarusian player.
Their most recent meeting on Quake Live LAN. The tournament used an unusual format — players were seeded into groups to determine playoff seeding. That created a group with
rapha,
Cypher,
evil and
DaHanG. In his match vs
rapha,
Cypher lost — as often happened in their rivalry, the player who lost the series still took the first map, but couldn’t finish the job. By the end of the tournament,
Cypher reached the grand final and beat
DaHanG 3:0.
rapha stumbled in the quarterfinals, losing to
toxjq.
