Before the group stages of BLAST Rivals Fort Worth kicked off, you’d be forgiven for looking at the groups and matchups only to think, “for the love of Jame, can’t we just skip to the playoffs already”.

But much to the dismay of FURIA and Brazilian CS fans everywhere, things didn’t end up being as predictable as they seemed.

After annihilating GamerLegion 13-5 on their map pick of Inferno, it looked like the FalleN last, last, last, no, seriously, guys, this is actually the last dance, might be kicking off with a bang, but then they went and dropped stinkers on Nuke and Mirage, sending them to a lower bracket clash with FaZe (who lost to NAVI).

Surely that would go much better, right guys? Right?

Well, about that.

Somehow - and seriously, we don’t have a clue how - FaZe managed to beat FURIA, and battered them even harder than GamerLegion did on Nuke. Twistzz called a phenomenal game, too, so we guess it really is just Liquid that’s cursed.

Elsewhere, HooXi had a much better time than FalleN, he’s currently the seventh-highest rated player at the event after a solid-ish display against G2 (who made light work of Astralis) and a monster (for him) 1.36-rated display against FUT.

Speaking of FUT, they were always bound to exit in last place after the announcement lauNX wouldn’t be travelling to Texas, but boy, did they put on a show.

Vitality’s Dust2 has been an impenetrable wall for an incredibly long time now, but that mattered little to coolio, he put in a respectable 14-18 statline to help push FUT to a 13-11 win.

You have to feel sorry for ZywOo in that one, though. He ended the map 30-11 with a 1.78 rating. The next highest on Vitality? flameZ, on 0.91.

Vitality did manage to bounce back to take Nuke (and the series) 13-11, but that wasn’t without choking an 11-1 lead first. They looked off their game throughout the group stage, right up until they dispatched G2 13-3 on Dust2 to seal their semi-final berth.

Typical.

What’s not typical, though, is that broky actually had a good game against FURIA, ending the series on a 1.21 rating.

We suppose he saw coolio and HooXi’s performance and decided he couldn’t be shown up THAT much.

Makes a change, but we all know what broky we’ll be seeing in the playoffs.