Liquid run riot on day one - IEM Krakow

Team Liquid smashed NIP to move into the upper bracket at IEM Krakow, with impressive performances across the board.

ultimate had taken some flak from the Counter-Strike scene - not least from us - but he was solid throughout and joined EliGE at the top of the scoreboard, though it could have been any of them.

Krimbo, as stand-in, topfragged map one and generally looked like the player we remember from BIG. That’s a pretty good audition for someone to pick him up - he’s far too good for the bench.

There’s been some hype for cairne on NIP, but there was little to really shout about from that side as NIP were pretty soundly beaten, and cairne didn’t really get into the game.

Astralis also picked up a comfortable 2-0 win over paiN, who as always were a bit of a letdown. ryu had fire in his hands this game and seemed unable to do any wrong, with HooXi finally fulfilling the prophecy of not needing to frag, as he went horribly negative in a tidy win.

vsm was the one bright spot for paiN, in his defence, but they looked disjointed, untidy and disappointing.

Talk of the town PARIVISION picked up another solid win over HEROIC, though this one was probably less convincing than any of their Bounty wins.

They were dominant on Inferno and Ancient, but they were quite easily dealt with on Dust 2 in a showing weaker than anything they showed in Malta, especially as HEROIC still have a stand-in AWPer.

zweih struggled a bit but Jame and nota continued their form and it was enough for PARIVISION to make it through. xfl0ud had a big game for HEROIC, and there were flashes from others (nilo’s ace on Dust 2 was a particularly stand-out) but not quite enough to trouble Jame on the other maps.

They’ll face Aurora tomorrow, who were very decisive in a win over GamerLegion, which was refreshing to see. woxic had a superb game, but it should be mentioned that PR had an ‘off-game’, which is a very polite way of saying he was absolutely awful.

Just eight kills over two maps for the Czech rifler. When we’re typing out the word rather than pawing at the number keys, you know it’s bad.

Still, a big win for Aurora and a much-needed one too.

BC.Game also had a remarkably one-sided win - at least on map two - with a 13-1 Inferno win over Legacy. It wasn’t even entirely driven by s1mple, though he was excellent on both maps, but aragornN, who put up over 110 ADR and had multiple huge rounds to make this one a swift game.

B8’s decision to bench headtr1ck for segukawa seemed inspired after Dust 2, where he tore NRG to shreds, but he wilted quickly and couldn’t find his footing as NRG pulled off an unlikely reverse sweep.

oSee was everywhere on Mirage and seemed to be finding opening kills every round, with NRG going up 12-0 at the half, before sadly missing out on the 13-0. Boo!

3DMAX pulled off a crazy comeback from 0-1 and 5-13 down to win their series over FUT, who had been so impressive up until that point. We’re none-the-wiser as to how good either of these teams are, but the ceiling for FUT does seem extremely high.

G2 were quite comfortable in their win over Passion UA, which is nice to see. The Counter-Strike world is a better place when G2 are a team worth watching, and we tipped them to be the most reliable team here, which was very brave.

Well, they were comfortable as long as you ignore the terrible first map that included losing to a ninja defuse and hideously ugly win in the second map, which included losing to full glocks.

That is as clean as G2 get, in fairness.