Liquid off to disastrous start - Day One Stage Two Budapest Major

Team Liquid got smashed by PARIVISION to leave themselves in the 0-2 bracket after day one of the second stage.

They made the grave mistake of challenging Russians on Dust 2 and were punished, with Nota dropping a staggering 19-2 T side half en route to a simple victory.

This came after an opening round loss to B8 in marginally less embarrassing fashion, with Liquid grabbing just ten rounds over the whole day - three against PARIVISION, seven against B8.

This is a team with big money and big names on it, and this is a downright awful start to the Major campaign.

NIP won the grudge match over Astralis - and followed it up with another win, as Astralis tumbled to 0-2.

NIP lost to NRG in the opening game of the last round, but haven't lost since and now look set for the third stage of the Major, and are looking better than ever. xKacpersky continues to impress since his signing, and has revolutionised an NIP team that looked to have all the pieces except that star.

They dominated TYLOO in the second game, despite a frankly absurd 1v4 from Mercury that ended being cosmetic more than impactful.

Astralis on the other hand felt the other side of the Major emotions, as they fell to M80 and now sit in the 0-2 bracket going into day two, needing to win three BO3s in a row.

Lake was one of the most impressive players in the first stage, having inspired M80 to a 3-0, and he was once again the best player in the server. Nobody expected this when he had the unenviable task of following malbsMd's footsteps on this team, but Lake has been superb.

Astralis are joined by FlyQuest, which is a pretty big swing from the highs of the 3-0 in the first stage. The step-up has proven to be tough - they were 0-12 down against NAVI in the opening game, but avoided the 0-13, before getting beaten comprehensively by 3DMAX.

MIBR are the other 0-2 team, losing the Brazilian derby and then losing to Passion UA, which is a pretty poor showing - though we didn't expect loads from MIBR anyway.

Joining NIP in the 2-0 bracket is NAVI, who have lived up to their billing with comfy wins over the aforementioned FlyQuest and Imperial. No fuss, no mess - NAVI look like a team set to go 3-0 with no sweat.

Which would be a nice change.

If you read the preview from this morning, you might remember us saying that FaZe would not go through, which has proven to be whatever the opposite of prophetic is. They're also 2-0, taking two close Dust 2 games over Passion UA and Aurora, which are pretty legit wins.

The shock inclusion to the 2-0 bracket is B8, who as mentioned beat Liquid, but also came out on top in a 24-rounder against fnatic to put themselves in a great position to qualify. We mentioned that they could beat anyone, and now they only need to beat someone in a BO3 to move on to the next stage.

That leaves TYLOO, Imperial, 3DMAX, M80, Aurora, Passion UA, fnatic and PARIVISION in the 1-1 bracket.

They've all been mentioned above in some capacity, so we won't dive too deep into their results, so if you need more you can click here to see every result.