Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) yoman Chae Young-moon (채영문) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) have won the Pulse Invitational. They secured their tournament victory with a 2-0 win in the grand finals over Cloud9 Cloud9 North America Rank #8 Xeppaa Erick Bach v1c Victor Truong mitch Mitch Semago neT Michael Bernet OXY Francis Hoang .

The tournament served as a return to glory for Gen.G, who had struggled to place the same in the last month as they had in May and June when they established themselves as the rivals to TSM TSM North America Rank #5 Recoil seven Johann Hernandez gMd Anthony Guimond vora sym Tyler Porter for the title of best team in North America.

TSM was notably missing from the grand finals. They were eliminated in the first round of the single elimination playoff bracket by Cloud9. That defeat ended a 16-match win streak for TSM's starting five that lasted for nearly a month.

Gen.G was undefeated for the duration of the tournament, losing just a single map over the course of the weekend. Still, they came close to not making the grand final at all. They squeaked out a tight overtime victory in their first map of their semifinal against Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #4 N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid before losing the next map and losing eight rounds in the final map before securing their first round. They won 10 of the final 11 rounds of that match to qualify for the grand finals.

They never faced the same danger in their grand final, winning both maps with several rounds to spare. They sealed their victory in the first map, Bind, by reading a rotation from Cloud9 and halting it with a collateral from HUYNH 's Operator. Gen.G carried that momentum into the next map, Ascent, and were in firm control throughout.

The grand finals were an uncharacteristically quiet set from Cloud9 star TenZ . He failed to break even on kills per death in either map and his average combat score for the series averaged around 200.

TenZ remained one of the stats leaders of the tournament despite the quiet grand finals and was the only player to have an average combat score above 300 for the tournament. He was outpaced in kills per death and kills per round by TSM star WARDELL . gMd and huynh were standout performers for Gen.G, although the whole team shined throughout the tournament.

Multiple unsigned teams made their mark on the tournament. Code7 Code7 Inactive robwiz Rob Kennedy Nicolas Nicolas Aubin Tork Jake Lepoff pho Mike Panza payen Nathaniel Lopez beat Immortals Immortals Inactive in overtime in the group stage and became their group's top seeded team in the playoff bracket as a result. together we are terrific together we are terrific Inactive c4Lypso Abdo Agha mummAy Anthony DiPaolo LeviathanAG Aleko Gabuniya PureR Bryce Lovell LenX Andy Collins earned the second playoff spot of their group over Inactive thanks to a superior round score and finished the tournament in fourth.

The story of the tournament, however, was Gen.G's consistency and strength throughout. They'll be looking to use this tournament as a springboard to more victories and a potential challenge for TSM's throne as North America's best VALORANT team.

The final standings for the Pulse Invitational are: