The first half of games in the IEM Oakland PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Invitational ended with TSM atop the leaderboards heading into Sunday’s matches.
Four games were played Saturday afternoon as 20 top teams faced off in Erangel to try and jockey for position in what can only be described as a marathon of matches over the course of the weekend at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.
Open qualifier team Digital Chaos jumped out to a large lead after the first game with a 15-kill victory, stacking up 450 points. Those numbers weren’t enough to keep them in the lead after the second game, which was won by Cloud9.
The third game of the day saw big changes on the leaderboards, however, as Method put up 17 kills of their own to win the game and propel themselves into first place, a full 200 points ahead of Digital Chaos.
The first day closed out in a fourth and final game, as the pace picked up and teams came out of their shells a bit to play more aggressive. The last five players alive saw three different teams facing off in a small group of houses, but TSM came out on top to win the game with a two-vs-one over NiP, and 10 kills overall.
As for the broadcast itself, IEM Oakland showed many improvements over the gamescom Invitational that ESL put on in August. It seemed as though the observers were more comfortable in their roles and the broadcast had a decent flow overall. Minor improvements like listen-ins and replays made a big difference in the end.
That being said, it suffered from some of the same issues that plagued gamescom’s show, but that might have more to do with the game itself than broadcast settings. There were long lulls of inactivity, followed by a mad dash towards the final circles where all hell broke loose and it was basically impossible for observers to keep up with the kills as they went down.
All in all, though, IEM Oakland had an exciting first day, and TSM’s lead is anything but insurmountable as a win awards 300 points and kills add 10 points each. Four more games on Sunday afternoon stand between the field and their shares of the $200,000 prize pool.
