It feels like we might be talking about donk quite a bit this year.

Spirit kicked off their run in the RMR qualifier with a loss, but it was immaterial - because donk decided he wanted some stickers, ASAP.

He ended the Closed Qualifier B as the highest rated player, beating out names like NertZ, XANTARES and blameF en route to the RMR.

That rating was largely powered by an absurd 23-6 - in 15 rounds - against MOUZ on map one in Spirit’s qualifying game, which also saw Jimpphat end on a singular kill. One prodigy seems better than the other, in this one game sample size.

Elsewhere, Group A saw Cloud9 and NAVI go 3-0, with Group B’s 3-0 teams perhaps being a bit more surprising. Eternal Fire have been on the rise, in fairness, but AMKAL’s 2-1 win over Astralis wasn’t on many people’s radars.

Astralis went through 3-1 regardless, with Spirit and ex-ThunderFlash (no idea), mirrored by SAW, BetBoom and VP in the other group. SAW took down fnatic in a BO1 to kick off their run, and two-zipped 9 Pandas to qualify. Fair play.

Rounding out those groups were OG, fnatic and 9 Pandas in Group A, with Heroic, KOI and MOUZ sneaking in at 3-2 in Group B - but that’s not all.

The remaining 2-3 teams had a last chance saloon: the decider bracket. Counter-intuitively, five of the six teams go through, for reasons unbeknownst and not-understood by us. 3DMAX scraped through in fifth place, beating out poor sYnck, who miss out.

Preasy, Nexus, PERA, ECSTATIC and 3DMAX live on - just about - to the next stage.