Katowice day one: The main course

There was a little bit of ZywOo-doubting, pre Katowice.

In the past he’s done badly in Poland and has yet to get through to the quarter-finals and beyond, but he might be finally breaking the ‘curse’.

Which is a wild thing to call something that’s happened thrice, but we’re nothing if not narrative drivers.

ZywOo went pretty berserk against MOUZ, dropping 97 kills over the series. That’s not a typo, you’re not still half asleep - he dropped 97. If this form with the new Vitality line-up isn’t enough to win Katowice, what will be?

We’ll add a caveat that this is MOUZ without their full roster, and at times stand-in JDC struggled - but you can barely be a pro if you haven’t been humbled by ZywOo a few times these days.

Another team who look like they might be in Katowice-winning form is Virtus.pro - not deterred by their own curse of being the team aizyesque picked to win the tournament, they ripped Copenhagen Flames to shreds.

YEKINDAR, in typical fashion, bottomfragged, was the only negative member of his team, and had the highest ADR in the server. He also picked up three aces in two maps, making up 43% of his kills.

Gambit somehow conspired to lose against NiP. We’re not sure what it is about having no ping that seems to affect Gambit so badly, but for them to lose to NiP missing device it must be pretty bad.

OG collected their first loss of the nexa era as Heroic ground out victory as they so often did in the past; it required a superhuman effort from stavn, but the Danes won out in an 87-round series.

Speaking of Danes, Astralis’ struggles continued as arT taped his W key down and tied Astralis up. It’s never a good sign for your chances of going far when the guy who is famous for his over-aggression and dying for his team is second on the team.

Finally for day one, Team Liquid did their national duty of raising American hopes in map one before bringing them crashing down by getting bodied in map two and three by FaZe, without ropz.

Never change, NA.