Luccas “Paluh” Molina, the standout fragger player of Team Liquid has been crowned the SiegeGG MVP following his team’s victory at the OGA Pit Season 3 Finals in Croatia this weekend.
Paluh during day one of the event
Paluh is a relatively new player to the R6 scene, having joining the up-and-coming team of GIMP in February last year before quickly jumping straight into the Pro League for Season 8 on BootKamp Gaming. Here, he made an immediate impression as he took the OGA Pit Season 1 title while keeping his team in a position to challenge for a spot at the Pro League Finals throughout the season before finishing in joint-third alongside Team Liquid, and Team oNe (now known as Black Dragons).
This performance got him noticed very quickly and he joined the reigning Pro League champions of Team Liquid the very next season alongside Guilherme "gohaN" Alf to replace José "Bullet1" Victor on the team. Here he’s stayed for the past year, having finished in the quarter-finals of DreamHack Winter and the 2019 Six Invitational, before going on to finish third at the Allied Minor, second at DreamHack Montreal, and first at both the 2019 BR6 LAN and now, the OGA Pit Season 3 Finals.
The complete Team Liquid lineup with their trophies via @rainbow6br’s flickr. From left to right, sitting then standing: Silence (their assistant coach), rafa (their manager), muringa, Nesk, Paluh, psk1, Sensi (their coach), ziG (Liquid’s streamer), Claudio Godoi (their Psychologist) and S3xyCake.
Liquid started these Finals with what many people thought would be the closest match of the day against the French majority lineup of Team BDS, but Liquid batted them aside in a 2-0 (7-4, 8-7) scoreline, with Paluh breaking the all-time single-map kill record, getting 27 kills on the road to the win. The next matchup saw the most successful LATAM roster ever face the North American wildcards of Luminosity Gaming and played out very similarly as Paluh once again ran riot and secured 19 kills on map two as they secured a 7-1, 8-6 scoreline to set up an all-LATAM winner’s final with MIBR.
This matchup was much slower paced than either of the LATAM teams had shown this weekend as the two teams, very accustomed to each other, went to three maps for the first time in the tournament for Liquid. While Paluh cooled off in this Best-of-Three with a 1.10 rating compared to his previous totals of 1.77 and 1.58, psk1 stood tall as he almost achieved a 2.0 K/D and led his team to a 4-7, 7-3, 7-4 victory over many of their ex-teammates.
Team Liquid during day three
And so, the day went onto the Best-of-Five grand final, with Liquid starting with a map advantage. Liquid began on their own map pick of Kafe which they clearly were well prepared for compared to their opposition of SSG as they took it 7-3, before SSG battled back on their own map pick of Clubhouse to win it 8-6. Liquid was still just a single map from victory at this point and they kicked on, as Nesk secured a kills-per-round figure greater than that of Paluh’s record with 20 kills in 10 rounds to win the map 7-3 and take Latin America’s first-ever Minor title.
Liquid with their trophy From left to right: psk1, Muringa, Nesk, xSexyCake, Silence, Paluh and Sensi
Throughout the tournament, Paluh achieved the highest overall rating of any player at 1.36, ahead of Rampy at 1.20 and Nesk at 1.18, as well as the highest rating in an individual game at a massive 1.77 against BDS Esports. To get a rating as high as this, he was the only player to secure a KPR above 1.0 at 1.04, ahead of Nesk and Rampy once again, secured two 1vXs (behind Rampy, Cyb3r, and ThinkingNade’s three) and ended with the highest KOST rating of the tournament at 0.74. All this was achieved while on the operators of Sledge and Jager and included his record-breaking kill count of 27, smashing the previous best of 25.
Due to this, he has been awarded the MVP title of the event and is thus only the second LATAM player to be crowned such alongside his teammate of Nesk.
Team Liquid’s full event statistics
We briefly spoke to Paluh about the tournament:
You now hold the all-time kill record for a single map, how does it feel?
Its awesome, i didnt expect to play that well against them, especially because they are known for their high skill, and reaching 27 kills was really gratifying
What is your personal training regimen like?
I always enjoy playing some ranked matches and recently, in LATAM we revived R6TM, to play more "high level" and i was playing it a lot
How much preparation went into this victory here amidst such strong opposition (at least on paper)?
We were really prepared for the match, the bootkamp we had in Amsterdam helped us a lot. The metas in LATAM are way different from the EU so it showed us some aspects we needed to change and improve.
Liquid at their bootcamp in the Netherlands.
Your team is still the only Latin American side to win an international event. Would you say that you are that much better than the other teams in your region?
I don't think that's it, when we play in Brazil, doesnt matter the team, its always hard and we never have that good results, most of our performance above the average i think is about mindset, we never give up and we are always confident.
He now joins a fairly elite lineup of previous SiegeGG MVPs seen below:
- Six Invitational 2018 - Pengu
- Season 7 Finals - Nesk
- Paris Major - Kantoreketti
- Season 8 Finals - Fabian
- Six Invitational 2019 - Kantoreketti
- Season 9 Finals - dan
- Allied Minor 2019 - Ferral
- Raleigh Major - SheppharD
- DreamHack Montreal 2019 - Beaulo
- Season 10 Finals - CTZN
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Congratulations to Team Liquid for taking the title and to Paluh for his award. You can view all of the weekend’s matches during the event here, see our news coverage of the event here, and watch our highlights of every match on YouTube here!