ESL Pro League S16 Day 1 results

The first competitive day of ESL Pro League Season 16 featured three beautiful CS:GO matches in Group A, in which the teams proved their strength. 

Two of the battles finished with predictable results and one gave us a sign that Fnatic, the team that dominated CS:GO back in 2015, might make a comeback this year or the next.

Natus Vincere vs. Team Spirit

Na’Vi started this match as the clear favorites and they didn’t disappoint. The first map, Nuke, was a little bit close (9-6 at halftime and 16-11 overall). But it was still obvious to everyone who watched that Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev’s team was going to win.

The second map was Dust II and Na’Vi won even faster: 16-9. Valery “b1t” Vakhovskiy almost single-handedly secured the victory for his team, finishing with a rating of 1.60.

In this match, Na’Vi’s superstar didn’t even play that well. He finished third on his team with a rating 2.0 of 1.11. But that didn’t change the result, because no less than four players had a positive K-D score. The only one that did less than spectacular was Denis “electroNic” Sharipov, but that’s because he is the IGL.

Team Vitality vs. Endpoint

This was a battle between the seventh best team in the world and the 37th! The only world-class player on Endpoint is Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjaerbye, but there was no way for him to stop Vitality alone.

On the first map, Vertigo, Endpoint managed to put up a fight and lost by a small margin: 16-12. But on the second map, Inferno, Vitality’s players had such an impressive performance that Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, who’s probably the best player in CS:GO after s1mple, finished last on his team with a rating of 1.09. The score was 16-5.

Overall, The best player on the server was ZywOo, who ended the day with a K-D score of +22.

Ninjas in Pyjamas vs. Fnatic

This match was a complete masterclass. But instead of being won by the favorites (NiP), Fnatic demonstrated that they can still play CS:GO against the world’s best and dismantle them. On both maps, the score was 16-4. The rating 2.0 of the weakest Fnatic player was 1.25. That’s how one-sided the battle was.

On the other team, Hampus “hampus” Poser finished with a K-D score of -28 and a rating 2.0 of 0.40. This was easily one of NiP’s worst defeats of the season. It will be interesting to see how they recover after such a beating. Right now, Fnatic are the favorites to finish third in the group.

Header: ESL