The round of 32 has finished at the Esports World Cup open qualifier, and Team Liquid are out of it. HLTV reports that 1win beat Liquid across three maps to reach the next round, while 100 Thieves and BC.Game both came through their opening playoff matches and will now face each other.
The series turned on the two teams trading dominant halves. On the opening map, 1win built their lead from the T side: HLTV credits Vladislav "nafany" Gorshkov and Sergey "Ax1Le" Rykhtorov with driving a methodical offence to a 10-2 advantage. Liquid did take a force-buy round early in the second half, but never closed the gap the first half had opened.
Liquid answered on Anubis. Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa found form on the CT side to punish what HLTV described as an unconvincing 1win attack, before Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski and Georgi "Jorko" Mitev took over after the switch and levelled the series.
Cache decided it, and it belonged to Andrey "BELCHONOKK" Yasinskiy. The rifler opened with a Deagle four-kill while his team were on a full eco and finished the map rated 2.46, sending 1win through at Liquid's expense.
The next round takes shape
100 Thieves and BC.Game set up the standout tie of the next round by winning their round-of-32 matches against INFINITE and OG respectively. The pairing puts Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev opposite Nicolai "device" Reedtz, and Emil "Magisk" Reif opposite a lineup carrying several of his former Astralis team-mates.
The rest of the round produced a handful of upsets. Phantom knocked out NRG, JiJieHao eliminated DENDELE, and GenOne beat Echo. Among the more familiar names, BIG, HEROIC and fnatic all advanced 2-0, while Acend, EYEBALLERS and Inner Circle needed closer series to get past FOKUS, SINNERS and Iberian Soul.
The open qualifier is the route into the Esports World Cup for teams without a direct invitation, which is what makes an early exit expensive: Liquid now have no further path through this bracket. The remaining sides carry on into the next round, with the 100 Thieves and BC.Game meeting the one confirmed matchup so far.
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