North, NiP, FaZe, and MIBR earn playoff slots on day 2 of DreamHack Masters Stockholm

Another day of DreamHack Masters Stockholm is done and dusted, and four teams have secured their spots in the playoffs this weekend.

In today’s winners matches, North, Ninjas in Pyjamas, FaZe Clan, and MIBR earned their rightful place in the playoffs of the $250,000 event in Stockholm, Sweden. The most surprising result of the day, however, was the Danish derby between North and Astralis, which North won in dramatic fashion in map three overtime.

Related: NRG sent packing in day one of DreamHack Masters Stockholm

At first, it seemed as though Astralis were on par to sweep North with ease. Astralis took map one Nuke 16-8 after destroying North on the CT side. But Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen and crew refused to go down without a fight on Inferno and Mirage.

With Philip “aizy” Aistrup shockingly being at the top of the scoreboard at 26 kills on Inferno, North managed to outfrag the so-called “best team in the world” by slight margins. After halftime, North ran away with map two 16-10 by winning their T side pistol round and a number of crucial buy rounds against Astralis.

Mirage was the most contested game of the series, even though it was partially because North choked their 11-5 lead, resulting in an overtime skirmish. Aizy had another good game, alongside Markus Kjaerbye, and North still pulled through with the win in their CT side of overtime. The final result was 19-17 in favor of North, despite Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz and Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander’s matching server top frags at 27.

“We tried to antistrat [Astralis] really hard,” MSL said in an interview with HLTV. “We knew coming into this game that we needed to do something different than other teams. I’ve seen teams looking like they didn’t even look at a demo from Astralis, so we chose to really go deep on the antistrat this time and it didn’t work at all [on Nuke].”

Group A

North vs. Astralis (Winners match)

• Astralis won Nuke 16-8
• North won Inferno 16-10
• North won Mirage 19-17

Group B

Ninjas in Pyjamas vs. Ghost Gaming (Winners match)

• Ghost won Inferno 16-11
• NiP won Train 16-12
• NiP won Nuke 16-6

Group C

FaZe Clan vs. OpTic Gaming (Winners match)

• FaZe won Dust II 16-6
• FaZe won Train 16-4

Heroic vs. Fnatic (Elimination match)

• Heroic won Mirage 16-11
• Fnatic won Inferno 16-8
• Heroic won Train 16-11

Group D

MIBR vs. Mousesports (Winners match)

• MIBR won Mirage 16-6
• MIBR won Inferno 16-8

HellRaisers vs. Gambit Esports (Elimination match)

• HR won Train 16-9
• Gambit won Cache 16-8
• HR won Inferno 16-10

DreamHack Masters Stockholm continues tomorrow at 5am CT, featuring a decider match between Astralis and TyLoo and the conclusion of the entire group stage. Four more teams will advance to the playoff stage tomorrow, while everyone else will be sent home.