A paucity of upsets as the favourites sweep day one - IEM Rio

It was a strong start to Rio for all of the big boys, with a 13-0 along with multiple other stomps included.

NAVI were the purveyors of the aforementioned 13-0, demolishing B8 on Ancient (B8's pick), before remarkably getting a taste of their own medicine 4-13 on Inferno, with former NAVI player npl going postal on them.

His 22-4 scoreline almost made up for going 3-13 on Ancient, as he single-handedly won Inferno for B8 - and yet it was all for naught as NAVI hit back with yet another one-sided map on Dust 2. A very strange series.

Speaking of strange series, 3DMAX raced into a 9-1 lead on Inferno against Falcons, and then won 2 of the next 25 rounds in a total capitulation.

With all the noise around kyxsan, it was nice to see him call two extremely successful T sides, though it is much easier when your AWPer goes 25-8 on the T side in the series. kyousuke had some typically delightful rounds, though wasn't fragging as consistently as it felt in real time. They barely needed him, though.

There were quite a few shelackings today, including Spirit smashing Liquid on Ancient - though it was much closer on Dust 2.

Spirit finally got to see the version of tN1R they thought they were getting, as he dovetailed excellently with donk to sink Liquid on Ancient, and stuck to his task on Dust 2 to get them over the line again. New boy malbsMd repayed a little bit of the faith Liquid have showed in him with an aggressive, selfless showing that has become his calling card.

We're still no closer to being certain on this Liquid team, and this neither brought us hope nor despair, just apathy.

MOUZ survived a bit of a scare but stayed resilient to put away a tough Legacy side.

saadzin was a constant thorn in MOUZ' side in the earlier maps, but he like the rest of Legacy ran out of steam as MOUZ dispatched of them comfortably on Mirage. Brollan seems to be on his way out, but he was superb on the final map and seemed to read arT like a book on a relatively uninspired T side.

SunPayus got a first win as IGL over his former teammates as G2 recovered from 0-1 down to beat Gentle Mates, with stand-in tAk hitting his stride in map three after a slow start. HeavyGod seemed unusually lethargic at times in this series, which may be an issue going forwards, but MATYS and NertZ picked up any potential slack and made it relatively comfortable in the end.

Vitality put RED Canids to the sword, obviously. What do you want us to say? ZywOo went 45-18, for crying out loud.

FURIA handled a Passion UA team missing their best player, go figure, while Aurora eviscerated an extremely poor HOTU team on Mirage, but they did come alive on Dust 2 after a horrendous first half. Somehow, they pushed Aurora to OT on D2, but lost anyway.