The fifth team in the world came as the third best ranked team to the LAN in Finland, but after two consecutive defeats, they ended their participation in the tournament. And while Complexity experienced a debacle in Group B, Fnatic bid farewell to the competition in Group A, which, as expected, did not do well with the new lineup.
The beginning of the tournament was full of surprises and victories for outsiders in the first round in both groups. HAVU, currently the 127th team in the world, surprised ENCE and spoiled the debut of Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander with a 13-6 win, while GamerLegion outplayed Fnatic 13-8.
HAVU continued to make surprises, after the fourth team in the world they defeated the 12th team of the HLTV ranking list GamerLegion in the fight for the semi-finals, while Fnatic had to fight for survival against ENCE.
Fnatic managed to take a 13-7 lead with a win on Anubis, but then suffered two tough losses (13-2 Vertigo, 13-5 Overpass).
We saw a similar outcome in Group B, where Apex defeated the world's third team MOUZ 19-16 after overtime, and Complexity unexpectedly lost to FURIA with a score of 8-13.
Apex continued with a good game and with a 2-0 victory confirmed the placement in the top 4, and in the fight for survival, MOUZ and Complexity fought a fierce battle, Complexity led 13-7 and they led on Inferna, but MOUZ managed at the last moment to turned the score around, winning 13-11 on the second map and then taking a 13-10 victory on Ancient.
GamerLegion and ENCE, respectively FURIA and MOUZ, meet in today's qualifying matches.
As a reminder, the tournament in the Finnish city of Espoo is played for a prize fund of 200,000 dollars, and the winner will take home the main prize in the amount of 100,000 dollars.
