The winner of the first semifinal is Team Liquid, who advance to the grand finals of the iBUYPOWER Cup and qualify for IEM San Jose after defeating CLG 2-0 (16-7 on de_overpass and 16-12 on de_cbble).

The first semifinal of the iBUYPOWER 2015 Cup was in some way the more important one as both teams were also competing to be the final contestant of the $100,000 Intel Extreme Masters tournament in San Jose in a week's time.

And in another sense, this semifinal was a showdown of two of North America's most consistent teams, both in their own way vying to take over the mantle from Cloud9 following that team's strong run in the summer of this year.

Liquid make the grand finals of the iBP Cup 

Team Liquid seemed hungry to take the crown on the first map, kicking off an aggressive, frag-based T-side that ultimately saw them go up 12-3 on the half. Despite winning the second pistol, CLG seemed overall dispirited and unable to mount a comeback, thus Liquid won 16-7 on de_overpass.

de_cbble once again began with a dominant Liquid T-side, driven by the dynamo that was Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella. Liquid were able to pull away to a 8-2 lead before CLG began to swing back, and narrow the half down to a 9-6 score in favour of Liquid.

Liquid had the wherewithal to take map point, but CLG then began to mount a comeback which forced a tactical timeout from Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag and his men. A close round with the score at 15-12 ultimately went Liquid's way with Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin getting a double kill and gave Liquid the series with a 2-0 score.

Team Liquid have now officially qualified for IEM San Jose and will take on EnVyUs in the quarter-finals.

iBUYPOWER Cup 2015Best of 3 CLGMatchpage 0 2 15th November 2015 Liquid 7Overpass 16 12Cobblestone 16

Liquid	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 1.0
Nick 'nitr0' Cannellanitr0	55 - 32	+23	-	1.52
Spencer 'Hiko' MartinHiko	43 - 31	+12	-	1.20
Jonathan 'EliGE' JablonowskiEliGE	38 - 35	+3	-	1.05
Jacob 'FugLy' MedinaFugLy	34 - 31	+3	-	1.04
Eric 'adreN' HoagadreN	28 - 25	+3	-	1.02

CLG	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 1.0
James 'hazed' Cobbhazed	32 - 34	-2	-	0.97
Pujan 'FNS' MehtaFNS	35 - 42	-7	-	0.88
Josh 'jdm64' Marzanojdm64	31 - 40	-9	-	0.82
Stephen 'reltuC' CutlerreltuC	32 - 41	-9	-	0.75
Tarik 'tarik' Celiktarik	23 - 41	-18	-	0.65

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter

Spencer 'Hiko' Martin Age: 25 Team: Liquid Rating 1.0: 1.13 Maps played: 324 KPR: 0.74 DPR: 0.60 Nick 'nitr0' Cannella Age: 20 Team: Liquid Rating 1.0: 1.09 Maps played: 235 KPR: 0.77 DPR: 0.68 Eric 'adreN' Hoag Age: 25 Team: Liquid Rating 1.0: 0.99 Maps played: 269 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.63