Astralis, MOUZ, Cloud9, VP and NAVI one win away from EU RMR
The big teams prevailed on day 1 of the closed RMR qualifier.
Eight teams are just one win away from securing a spot in the European RMR qualifier next month.
In Group A the four CIS teams, Cloud9, NAVI, BetBoom and Virtus.pro all made it through day 1 with a 2-0 record in the swiss format. Cloud9 came closest to a defeat in their second-round game against 3DMAX. The Frenchmen had a huge 10-4 lead but lost nine rounds in a row in the second half on Anubis. A great second half from Kirill 'Boombl4' Mikhailov was part of the reason why Cloud9 fought their way back into the match.
Fnatic, BIG, and OG find themselves with a 1-1 score after the first day of action in the stacked group.
You can see the schedule for today's action in Group A here: (CET)
16.00: SAW - Zero Tenacity
16.00: BIG - Fnatic
16.00: 3DMAX - OG
16.00: 9 Pandas - ECSTATIC
17.00: NAVI - Virtus.pro (Qualification match)
17.00: Cloud9 - BetBoom (Qualification match)
20.00: SINNERS - Nexus (Elimination match)
20.00: Permitta - JANO (Elimination match)
In Group B Astralis and MOUZ are 2-0 up. Astralis won both of their encounters convincingly. In their second-round match, they faced Preasy with Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen on the team. But despite a fine match from the 5x Major winner, dupreeh and the rest of Preasy stood no chance against their countrymen who could see Nicolai 'device' Reedtz pop off with a 21-11 K-D match. The two matches from Astralis were commentated by their former player Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye, who was so impressed with the showing that he tweeted out the following message after Day 1.
"Astralis will be number one again in 2024. Mark my words."
Heroic and MOUZ went toe to toe in the second round with the latter coming out on top after a 16-12 overtime win on Ancient. Ludvig "Brollan" Brolin gave a solid showing on his first day as a full member of the MOUZ lineup. The Swede is loaned out from Ninjas in Pyjamas. AMKAL and Eternal Fire also secured themselves a great position in the group with two victories on the first day, while Spirit came extremely close to losing both of their matches. It was only a 16-14 overtime win on Mirage against Entropiq that saw Spirit climb up to the 1-1 bracket alongside Heroic, KOI, and Preasy.
You can see the schedule for today's action in Group B here: (CET)
16.00: KOI - Heroic
16.00: Preasy - Spirit
16.00: PERA - IKLA
16.00: sYnck - ex-ThunderFlash
17.00: Eternal Fire - MOUZ (Qualification match)
17.00: AMKAL - Astralis (Qualification match)
20.00: EYEBALLERS - Entropiq (Elimination match)
20.00: Aurora - FORZE (Elimination match)