Grayhound and Movistar Riders win their groups at ESL Challenger Melbourne 2023

After day 1 of ESL Challenger Melbourne 2023, Gayhound and Movistar Riders are already qualified for the playoffs.

This second stage of the tournament features just four teams and consists of two semifinals and a Grand Final. Based on what we’ve seen so far, both winners of the group stage have an excellent chance of playing in the last match of the competition.

Group A results

In group A of ESL Challenger Melbourne, Complexity started with a narrow victory against ECSTATIC. The North American team had a huge lead after the first half (12-3) but the final score of the match was 16-14.

In the second match of the group, Grayhound won quite easily against Evil Geniuses Black, sending them into an Elimination match against ECSTATIC, which they ended up losing (1-2). The entire Grayhound roster performed well and each player had between 16 and 21 kills.

In the winners match, Grayhound defeated Complexity on Vertigo (11-16). Despite Michael “Grim” Wince’s excellent performance (K-D: 24-17), the Australians were simply too good. No less than three players of Grayhound had more than 20 kills and a rating 2.0 between 1.23 and 1.67.

The best player on the server was Declan “Vexite” Portelli, who finished the match with 28 kills and just 18 deaths. He averaged more than a kill per round, which is very impressive.

Group B results

Group B of ESL Challenger Melbourne 2023 is full of well-known teams, including Movistar Riders, Bad News Eagles, and Rare Atom. In the case of BNE, we’re talking about a team that will play at the Paris Major as a Legend, which is quite remarkable. However, Riders still managed to beat them.

The first round of matches was won by BNE (16-10 against VERTEX) and Riders (16-19 against Rare Atom). In the winners match, Riders decided to remove Mirage, Ancient, and Vertigo. BNE removed Nuke, Anubis, and Overpass.

Inferno was left in the pool and Riders looked very well-trained on it. After the first half, the score was 4-11 in their favor. The final score of the match was 11-16.

In the elimination match, VERTEX lost against Rare Atom, as everyone expected, but not before winning the first map and creating some serious problems for their opponent. The scores were 16-10 on Vertigo, 13-16 on Inferno, and 10-16 on Overpass.

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