Spirit annihilate MIBR to go 2-0 in Stage Two - IEM Cologne Major

It was mostly a good day for the favourites - not least Spirit, who coasted to a 2-0 start in Cologne.

They dropped six rounds in two maps, and five of those came against BetBoom. They are quite clearly just too good for this stage (and potentially the whole tournament, on this showing), especially as donk ended the first day with a rating over 2.0.

Just a handful of numbers from the first day for him; 1.38 kills per round with 0.50 deaths, a multikill in over 40% of the rounds, an opening kill more than once every five rounds with zero (0) opening deaths, and over 120 ADR.

Quite good, that lad.

BetBoom didn't get near them, but MIBR were even further away, managing just one round in what felt like a map over in the blink of an eye. They were just incredibly dominant.

Every result can be found here if you want more details from these games.

9z were the only 'shock' in 2-0, but not really a shock as this isn't their first time doing so. They're genuinely quite scary, swatting aside Astralis and FlyQuest to move into the 2-0 bracket, though one would expect them to drop into the 2-1 bracket when they face Spirit.

G2 pulled off a comeback in triple OT over Monte, who really should have closed the game out at 18-15, but choked a little bit with the 2-0 in their grasp. SunPayus looks like one of the best AWPers in the stage, which is encouraging - his form has been trending upwards, and he's a large part of the reason they might be able to do something here. There are vanishingly few better AWPers, even in the world, on current form.

FUT make up the final 2-0 team, getting the better of TYLOO despite another fantastic performance from JamYoung.

Onto the teams who had a much worse day; GamerLegion came out of the first stage as one of the better teams, but fell to one of the teams who finished above them, BetBoom, to go 0-2. They were also comfortably smashed by Astralis, which might be more worrying.

B8 lost to M80 with Lake having one of those games that we became accustomed to seeing when he first replaced malbsMd, while FlyQuest got struck with the arT of war, as Legacy overpowered them in the 0-1 game.

One other Brazilian team was not so lucky, as paiN fell to both TYLOO and BIG. Not great signs in either game - unless you had them 0-3.

Tomorrow's (or today's) games bring us all sorts of excitement; G2 vs FUT for a 3-0 place should be a very high quality game, and watching donk has so far been a joy no matter what, with them facing 9z.

Monte vs Legacy is an intriguing one in terms of placing those tier two teams into their rightful brackets, and Astralis take on TYLOO in a game of control vs chaos. BetBoom meet M80, and MIBR lay eyes on BIG on the other 1-1 games.

For elimination, paiN have a chance against FlyQuest to stay alive, while B8 vs GamerLegion with survival on the line could be a very fun one.

Not for them, obviously.