Spirit soar to 2-0 on opening day of Stage Three - Budapest major

Watch out everyone - Spirit look like they mean business.

Spirit can be extremely frustrating because they’re so reliant on two players to carry them - but as we mentioned in our contender article, those players are some of the best in the world and can actually just carry you most of the time.

That became very obvious when donk and sh1ro obliterated Liquid with 54 kills combined in 21 rounds. donk had 30 of them. What are you supposed to do about that?

donk wasn’t bad against FaZe either, going 18-7 and picking up his second ace of the day. A ridiculous player.

Spirit moved to 2-0, and were joined by G2, MOUZ and FURIA. Nothing too surprising, with G2 being maybe the most unlikely. SunPayus looks in good nick again, though, which is lovely to see, and that team is full of very talented players.

What we’re saying is, it’s not all that surprising.

The bad and the ugly

It’ll be no surprise if you watched Liquid to hear they went 0-2 in this stage, but losing to The MongolZ is pretty worrying, given they’re playing without Senzu. The MongolZ lost to Imperial to start the stage, too.

They’re joined by fellow sort-of-NA side Passion UA, who had completely understandable losses to both G2 and Falcons. We’re not going to chew them out for that, but that’s the level you have to be at to compete in the third stage.

3DMAX’s opening round loss to paiN was one they’ll look back at with regret (except bodyy, who was absolutely superb and did not deserve to lose), not least because it left them in an 0-1 game against Vitality. There’s not much you can do about that - Vitality lost to a buoyant FaZe in the opening game, but are not about to lose again to 3DMAX, let’s be serious here.

PARIVISION lost an overtime game to MOUZ on Overpass that they’ll feel they could and should have won, but they were quite cleanly beaten by NAVI on Ancient. Moral of the story: don’t pick Overpass against Jame.

PV will feel a little unlucky to be 0-2, but Jame’s not going to panic just yet.

The rest

B8 beat Falcons and lost to MOUZ to find themselves 1-1, which is a respectable pair of results. They still look like a team who belong here, and it wouldn’t be a massive shock to see them in the playoffs now.

Vitality and Falcons as mentioned recovered from first round losses, and FaZe are also in the same 1-1 bracket after getting donk’d.

Tomorrow’s games

FaZe vs The MongolZ and B8 vs Vitality both start the day, which is really sad for those of you with only one monitor. Both are eminently watchable, and you should find a second monitor from somewhere.

paiN take on NAVI and Imperial take on Falcons, in what is set to be a bad hour for the fingernails of Brazilian fans. Both teams should lose, but that is not how things work.

Then onto the BO3s, and we've got MOUZ vs Spirit for playoffs, and Passion UA vs Liquid for survival. We love drama, so we will be tuning in to the not-really-NA derby.

FURIA vs G2 close out the day, along with PARIVISION and 3DMAX. FURIA are a must watch every time they're on the screen, and G2 at their peak are as fun as it gets, too.