After two days of thrilling action, Group A has two teams that are the clear favorites heading into the final day of ESL One Katowice’s group stage.
The current No. 1 team in the world, Team Secret, are sitting atop the group at 7-1. They actually started out their tournament by splitting their series against OG.
That series was tightly contested in game one, running nearly an hour as OG pulled things together in the last 10 minutes to hold their lead. Secret fired back in game two with a much more decisive win.
After that match, though, Secret completely dominated anyone who faced them. They won six games in a row, sweeping For The Dream, Forward Gaming, and Mineski, with little to no opposition from any of them.
Gambit Esports are right up there with Secret at the top of the standings, also sitting pretty at 7-1 thanks to their own hot start.
Much like Secret, they ended up splitting their opening series against Forward. But after that, they went on to dismantle FTD and even managed to make short work of OG.
After two sweeps in a row, they faced some competition from Mineski. The Chinese team played them close in the opening minutes of both matches, but it wasn’t enough to actually take a game since Gambit executed well down the stretch to secure the tie for first place.
Both Secret and Gambit will be moving on to the next stage of the event as the top seeds from their group. OG are in the third spot and will likely move on with them after going 4-4 through the first two days.
Mineski and Forward, on the other hand, are in desperate need of some wins on the final day of the group stage because between them and last-place FTD, two of them will be eliminated from the tournament.
The playoffs at ESL One Katowice begin on Feb. 21 at 10:30am CT.
Published: Feb 21, 2019 08:44 am