On the second day of the ELeague major qualifier, an expected distance began to form between the top teams and everyone else in the Swiss format bracket. Here's how Day 2 played out.
Renegades and Counter Logic Gaming started out the day with a game that few could have predicted. Renegades looked dominant early on, pushing to a 15-5 lead. From that point, CLG surged back as Renegades seemingly forgot that you need 16 rounds to win a map. CLG would go on a 14-1 run throughout the end of the second half and into overtime to take the map and leave both teams with a 1-1 record in the tournament.
Next up was Ninjas in Pyjamas against HellRaisers, the first matchup of the day between undefeated teams. Despite the fact that they were effectively in a winner's bracket, few people gave HellRaisers a shot in this one. Those people were undoubtedly feeling good about the prediction as NiP held 13-7 and 15-12 leads throughout the match. However, HellRaisers wouldn't give up and battled back to force an overtime and pick up a 19-17 win behind a stellar performance from Bence "DeadFox" Böröcz.
Immortals continued their strong run at the qualifier with another big win, this time over Vega Squadron. Despite being able to take out CLG on Day 1, Vega looked lost against more formidable competition. They only got four rounds on both the T- and CT- side, as Immortals used a massive 31/10 game from Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles to coast to an easy 16-8 victory.
Despite claiming a 2-0 record, GODSENT certainly didn't take any easy route to get a favorable standing this weekend. After beating G2 16-11 yesterday, they got off to a pretty slow start against Team Dignitas today. They fell into an early 1-8 hole in the first half before stabilizing in a big way the rest of the way. Their CT-side on Mirage was incredible as they locked Dignitas down, only giving up two rounds in the half. This time it was Andreas "znajder" Lindberg coming through with a 25/18 KD (kills/death ratio) to push his team to victory.
The second-to-last game of the day turned into one of the biggest upsets we will likely see all weekend, with TyLoo taking down Cloud9. From the jump Cloud9 looked to be out of sync and were unable to do much against the Chinese squad early on. TyLoo took a 10-5 lead into the half before finishing to a 16-11 win. The North American hopefuls now have just one life to live, as one more loss will eliminate them.
Mousesports and G2 Esports also bounced back after a couple tough losses on the first day of competition. Mousesports got their first win of the event over Team Spirit in a game that was practically given to them after Spirit failed to ban Dust 2, mousesports' best map. The German squad made them pay with a 16-5 trouncing. G2's path to their first win was a bit tougher, as they had to overcome Team EnVyUs. Most of the game was close, with both teams jockeying for position throughout. G2 would use a late 7-1 run to finally put EnVyUs away and get a win. Team Spirit and EnVyUs now sit at 0-2 and are on their last life for the qualifying event.
The day ended with the other North American team in OpTic Gaming dropping their second game to fall to 1-1 on the weekend. FaZe Clan got out to a strong 8-0 start on the T-side of Overpass, which ended up being far too much for OpTic to come back from. They did attempt a comeback, tying things up at 11 before FaZe picked up their play to take the map 16-11 and improve to 2-0.
The action kicks off Saturday at 10:00 a.m. ET with G2 taking on Vega Squadron. Four teams are sitting at a 2-0 record and four teams are sitting at 0-2, which means we will be guaranteed to see two teams lock up a spot in the major and two teams lose their shot. If the first two days are any indication, there will be plenty of reasons to tune in.