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Virtus.pro and ESC Gaming are through to the Upper Bracket final of the SLTV StarSeries finals after winning their respectice semi-final contest.

Day one of the SLTV finals, taking place at the CyberSports ARENA in Kiev, kicked off with a Russian clash between Virtus.pro, who had won the regular season, and zNation.

The match started out on de_inferno_se, where Virtus.pro went into half-time down 8-7. After such a keenly-contested first half, things changed after the break, as Virtus.pro, now playing on the CT side, turned the score around to win the map 16-10.

de_dust2_se then followed, with Virtus.pro sealing another 16-10 victory against zNation after winning the first half 8-7 to seal progression to the Upper final.

SLTV StarSeries IVBest of 2 Virtus.proMatchpage 2 0 20th December 2012 zNation 16Inferno_se 10 16Dust2_se 10

On the other end of the bracket, ESC Gaming locked horns with Imaginary Gaming, who were previously known as JAS, in what had been the most anticipated match of the day.

A rampant start from ESC on de_inferno_se saw the Polish side win a staggering 14 rounds in the first half, which they played as CT. A B rush in the pistol round gave ESC their 15th round and put the Frenchmen in an even more difficult situation, so it was without surprise that Filip "Neo" Kubski's side picked up a 16-1 victory.

de_nuke_ve was the second map, and in the early stages of the map it looked like ESC would cruise to another comfortable victory as they strolled to an early 6-1 lead, but Imaginary gave a better account of themselves and managed to win four more rounds to go into half-time down 10-5.

ESC were now playing on the highly-favoured CT side, and even though Imaginary put up a good fight as Terrorists, the Poles took all six rounds they needed to seal a 16-13 victory.

SLTV StarSeries IVBest of 2 ImaginaryMatchpage 0 2 20th December 2012 ESC 1Inferno_se 16 13Nuke_se 16

The SLTV StarSeries finals will resume on Friday with the Lower Bracket final, between Imaginary and zNation, at 11:00 and the Upper Bracket final, at 17:00 .

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