Photo courtesy of ESL
At the end of the group stage of ESL One Hamburg 2018, three more teams had dropped out before having a chance in the playoffs.
By the end of the second day of groups at ESL One Hamburg 2018, Alliance, Mineski and compLexity Gaming were all on the brink of elimination. With only one series left for them, all of the aforementioned teams needed a 2:0 sweep in order to turn their fate. Unfortunately for Alliance and Mineski, that didn't happen. Alliance seized the first win after 66 minutes of play against Evil Geniuses and their hopes were running high. Unfortunately, the Swedish team just couldn't gain a sizeable lead or advantage in the second match and ended up falling to the North Americans in just over 34 minutes. Mineski had the unfortunate experience to be matched against ViCi Gaming who had already displayed dominance throughout the group stage. VG steamrolled over Mineski in a clean 2:0 sweep and ended their run at ESL.
Meanwhile, compLexity Gaming seized control of their fate as they stepped up to the plate against Ninjas in Pyjamas. The first match took a whopping 81 minutes and finally ended in favor of compLexity. The second match took about 50 minutes but was mostly in the hands of the North Americans for the entire time. With their sweep over NiP, coL lived to see another day and eliminated the Swedish team from the event.
The first round of upper bracket series followed the thrilling groups to kick off the playoffs early. Virtus.pro squared off against Team Secret while Vici Gaming went head to head against Team Aster in an all Chinese affair. Both matches were forced to full 3 game series and in the end, it was VP and VG that prevailed to find themselves a spot in the upper bracket finals.
The action resumes today, October 26th at 12:00 CEST with three sets of lower bracket elimination series starting off with Evil Geniuses taking on compLexity Gaming.
??Main event format:
- Double elimination bracket
- All matches are 'Bo3'
- Grand-final match will be 'Bo5'
