s1mple vs ZywOo delivers on opening day of IEM Atlanta

s1mple put in a classic performance but it wasn't enough to stop a rampant Vitality from taking the series.

He was far and away the best player in the server on Dust 2 but found his teammates couldn't live up to his standards and let him down. For real this time. He went 28-13 as nobody else on either side hit 20, but Vitality were just more consistent across the board.

Mirage, map one, was a far more comfortable affair for Vitality as they cruised to a win thanks to a similarly quintessential ZywOo performance, and their reign of terror continues as we all expected. Some signs of life from s1mple and BC.Game, though, make this team a much more exciting prospect. If they can just get Senzu firing...

FaZe's honeymoon period lasted about half an event, it seems.

They were comfortably dispatched by a paiN team who are nothing special, and lost the first half 9-3 both times around. It's hard to pick on any individuals, as quite frankly, they were all pretty awful in this one. paiN ran over them as if they weren't there at times, and FaZe's problems do indeed sink deeper than karrigan's hands.

Who knew?

Everyone's other favourite crisis team, Liquid, were powerless to resist Astralis in a sort of bastardised version of what used to be the biggest game in the world.

jabbi was superb in this one, which is probably the worst omen for Liquid in a long, long list. We're not sure what has happened to NAF, but this was another ugly performance from him. Liquid are in serious trouble.

NAVI had more trouble taking down Passion UA than one might expect on Anubis, but had no such problems on Mirage, even on a rare off-day for makazze, and FUT survived a slow start to put NRG away in two.

FL4MUS and Magnojez shined in their first outing as a star duo as BetBoom came from behind to beat B8, GamerLegion reverse swept SINNERS and Legacy were pretty comfortable in dominating NRG to end the day.