BLAST Premier Spring Groups Day 2 recap

The first major event of the 2023 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive season is already underway in Copenhagen, Denmark, with the BLAST Premier Spring Groups. As we mentioned, twelve teams face off in the group stage, hoping to finish in the top six and thus guaranteeing a spot in the spring finals.

The tournament started with a surprising victory of Evil Geniuses over Heroic, coming back from a series after losing the first map, this being their selection. On the other hand, we rounded off the first day with a victory for Vitality in a very tight series against Astralis in Overpass and Inferno.

The second day of the BLAST Premier Spring Groups

For this second day of competition, the schedule was extended to three games, in which there was no shortage of notable results.

Es3tag shines with FaZe

As we mentioned, FaZe had to live a real novel to complete its team for this BLAST Premier Spring Group. Unfortunately, both Håvard “rain” Nygaard and coach Robert “RobbaN” Dahlström did not attend the tournament, and, in addition, BLAST did not allow them to include Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke. On the other hand, the registered alternate, Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer Gustafsson, did not know he was still on this list.

Likewise, FaZe included former NiP Patrick “es3tag” Hansen in his roster hours before the tournament started. The youngster had a spectacular performance against Complexity, his former team, as he had 31 frags and only nine kills in Overpass, which earned him a rating of over 2.0, according to HLTV.

Undoubtedly, this kind of performance can help es3tag get a long-term contract with any team on the scene. Recall how Justin “jks” Savage, FaZe’s understudy in IEM Katowice, had a spectacular performance that led him to join full-time with G2 Esports.

OG takes Team Liquid by storm

The two North American teams met after a shocker, as Team Liquid lost in two maps to OG, something unthinkable.

While this upset is not terrible like EG’s win over Heroic, Liquid entered this season as one of the strong contenders to be among the best, thanks to the momentum taken at the end of 2022.

The OG trio of Adam “NEOFRAG” Zouhar, Abdulkhalik “degster” Gasanov, and Nemanja “nexa” Isaković were not willing to see their team fall to Liquid again.

After this loss, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski stated that it was a very frustrating match for them and that they made many mistakes.

G2 Esports falters but holds its own

G2 Esports managed to bounce back at the end of 2022 after a terrible season, where they even failed to qualify for the IEM Rio Major.

G2’s determination was tested at the start of the 2023 season. The team suffered too much in Mirage, the first map against BIG. After a spectacular 8-0 start, their opponents came back and got to 14-14, but thanks to a clutch by Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač, the team could win.

In Inferno, on the other hand, G2 was able to find its ideal game rhythm and took a quiet 16-9 victory to take the series. For G2, Nikola “NiKo” Kovač shined with a K/D of +10 and an ADR of 101.9.

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