Well, in the end it all made sense. The destination was normal, but the journey was wild.

If we told you Astralis, G2 and FURIA all made it through the first stage of ESL Pro League, you’d think ‘well obviously. Why are you even telling me this? Should I just sign up for the other website’s newsletter instead?’, wouldn’t you?

That would be burying the lede a little, though - as all three went through in the 2-2 games.

FURIA, hot off the back of some of the best CS we’ve seen them play since Despacito was in the charts, found themselves 1-2 after losses to HOTU and Legacy, while G2 had lost to B8 and Gentle Mates to go 1-2.

Astralis had lost to ENCE and GamerLegion to join a 1-2 bracket that was remarkably stacked for such an unfashionable stage.

Sadly, all three won their respective next two games, with FURIA beating B8 from 0-1 down, Astralis smacking Legacy on map three to complete their own reverse sweep, and G2 keeping it clean against ENCE.

Boooooring!

You might be wondering who went 3-0, in that case, and you’ll literally never guess. Unless you read the last newsletter, in which case you will actually have heard of both HOTU and Inner Circle before the former’s mention in this here story.

HOTU beat FURIA, B8 and ENCE, which is about as legit as a 3-0 can be at this stage of the event, and generally just looked like a team who’d been at this level for a while. You’ll probably know n0rb3r7 but nobody else on this team, but we love the name dukefissura.

Inner Circle have even fewer players you’ll know, but a 2-1 win from behind over Gentle Mates is nothing to scoff at, and that was after beating GamerLegion and 3DMAX. All teams who are way, way above them in the VRS rankings, losing to them in the Swiss system.

Food for thought. If only we had some sort ofSwiss system qualifier for the Major where teams like this could play against 3DMAX and GamerLegion and fraud-check them.

If you’re looking for players to watch on these teams, mizu from HOTU was the highest rated player in the whole stage. His stats page has more green than Snoop Dogg’s house. Dawy from IC had a 4.00% round swing, which is wild - if he kept that up, he’d be doing better than ZywOo, and he’s only 18.

Gentle Mates ended up making it through 3-1, and looked good doing it, while 3DMAX and GamerLegion did pass the fraud-check to also make it through 3-1.

If you swapped HOTU and Inner Circle with G2 and FURIA, this would all make perfect sense.

Actually, in retrospect, G2 just scraping through is actually more on brand if anything.