Day 1 of the ESEA Season 17 LAN finals have concluded, with Titan, Virtus.pro, Fnatic, and Cloud9 advancing to round 2 of the upper bracket while Denial, iBUYPOWER, eLevate, and mousesports will have to fight for survival in round 2 of the lower bracket.
The first map of the day was between Denial eSports and Titan on de_inferno, where the French team started off strong by ending the first half 10-5, albeit on the CT side. However, Denial made a surprising comeback, even making it map point at 15-13 on the second half, but Titan would have none of it, forcing the first overtime of the tournament at 15-15. Titan would eventually have none of it, closing off the first map 23-18 in double overtime. The second map was de_mirage, where the scoreline was also very close. Titan just barely edged past Denial the first half on their CT side 8-7, but eventually closed off the gap winning eight more rounds, 16-12. Titan will now advance to round 2 of the upper bracket, while Denial has dropped to the lower bracket.
The second match was between iBUYPOWER and Virtus.pro, where the North American giants surprised everyone by completely destroying their Polish oponents the first map, de_cache at 16-4. The second match was the complete opposite though, with iBUYPOWER seemingly asserting their dominance again on de_train with 9 rounds on the first half, only to be shut down as Virtus.pro took 10 rounds compared to iBUYPOWER's 1 in the second half, ending the second map 16-10. The third map, de_inferno, saw an amazing triple overtime as iBUYPOWER took a 10-5 lead on the first half, only to be combatted back to 15-15 by Virtus.pro. It was neck to neck from thereon out, before Virtus.pro finally managed to clutch the BO3 at 25-22.
A match between eLevate and Fnatic demonstrated why Fnatic is consitently ranked as one of the best teams in the world, where Fnatic took complete control of the match, winning the first map 16-0 and the second map 16-3.
Cloud9 vs Mousesports started off with the North American team getting an impressive 12 rounds on their CT side of de_cache, compared to mousesports' 3. Mousesports then began to mount a comeback, bringing the score to 8-13 before Cloud9 finally secured one round, only to receive six more lost rounds in return, equalizing the score at 14-14. Cloud9 then decided to close out the map, winning out the rest of the rounds in a close 16-14 scoreline. The second map, de_mirage had the German side pull ahead in a 11-4 scoreline, before closing the map out 16-12. de_train saw mousesports pull up a healthy 10-5 scoreline on their CT side, but eventually failed to get the last 6 needed rounds and lost the map and match 16-11.
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