DH Open Fall: First Teams Taking the Lead

After the first play-day, eight teams have managed to secure victories and will enter the Winners’ Matches today. Just as many teams have lost out, though, and will fight for their tournament lives.

GROUP A

Vitality were able to eliminate mousesports in rather quick fashion. This time around, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut didn’t even need to put on his carry pants, as Richard “shox” Papillion did this job with ease. With a 1.42 rating, he helped his team to two quick map wins and sent mouz down to the Elimination Match. There, they’ll have to face OG Esports, who failed to move past fnatic despite a fantastic first map. Mateusz “mantuu” Wilczewski and company got into the game beautifully and secured a dominant 16-5 on Mirage. Fnatic let themselves be tricked, outplayed, and failed to scrape meaningful rounds together on the CT side. On the offense, they performed even worse and couldn’t acquire a single point.

All of this changed drastically on the second map. Suddenly, they were in the driving seat and through some smart mid round calls, they managed to break the OG defense. Ending the first half with 7 points, they were perfectly set up for victory and brought the match onto a third map on a 16-11 scoreline. There, the Swedes were an outright dominant force. Their T side got them 10 rounds and even the best performance out of Valdemar “valde” Bjørn Vangså couldn’t help OG past the finish line. They’re now heading towards elimination territory. Fnatic are on their way to the Winners’ Match, hoping to get a good result and move into the playoffs early on.

GROUP B

G2 Esports took quite a while to eliminate Endpoint on 16-12 and 16-13 scorelines. But Astralis versus Heroic took even longer, lasting multiple hours and requiring half a dozen overtimes on the first map. On Vertigo, the Danes played out so many rounds that they almost completed two full maps in one. At the end, Astralis came out victorious on a 28-24 scoreline.

At this point, Heroic should have been done for. Instead, they took revenge on Train with a one-sided 16-8 win, fueled by the heroics of Casper “cadiaN” Møller. With 27 kills and a 1.90 rating, he was the top competitor on the server by far. He carried this level over to the third map. There, Astralis were much better structured, and Patrick “es3tag” Hansen joined Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen on the top of the scoreboard. The two managed to take down a Heroic team that itself was in top form. For cadiaN, this defeat must really sting, as he hasn’t been able to perform this well in a long time – but it still wasn’t enough to grant victory. At least they have an almost safe Elimination Match going up versus Endpoint.

GROUP C

GODSENT gifted us a comparatively short match against sAw. The mix-team surrounding Kevin “kRYSTAL” Amend snatched a 2-0, in which Asger “farlig” Jansen and Pavle “maden” Bošković put up a great show. So they’re one step closer to playoffs, but unfortunately, kRYSTAL has to face the best German team for the slot.

In the match between BIG and FaZe, Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and his men weren’t the ones who came out on top, as was previously expected. So they’ve already lost their first DH Open match this shortly after a crazy run through IEM Katowice. The rise of Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye has been grinded to a halt, after all FaZe had defeated BIG convincingly just a few days ago. On the first map, they managed to mount a competitive performance, but the 16-7 on Nuke was one-sided and decisive. Marcelo “coldzera” David and his colleagues now have to go up against sAw to prove that their uber performance at IEM wasn’t just a fluke. Meanwhile, BIG can earn a playoffs spot versus GODSENT.

GROUP D

Yesterday, we got some less tight matches as well – although they were far and few in between. Sprout succeeded against NiP and the Polish duo of Pawel “dycha” Dycha und Michal “snatchie” Rudzki got the highest ratings. Even though the duel between ENCE and North took three maps to complete, North’s double 16-8 wins were quite one-sided. Their newest addition, Jonas “Lekr0” Olofsson, is doing well. But ENCE are fielding a stand-in and Sami “xseveN” Laasanen was a weak point for his team. So North’s real test will be against Sprout today.

We can expect to see some tight and tense matches between top teams. Will FaZe fall from grace already? Can mousesports stay in the tournament? Will fnatic finally deliver a solid performance and earn themselves a playoffs spot? All of these questions will be dealt with in today’s DreamHack Open Fall bracket.