IEM Dallas started with a lot of predictable results. However, one team, perhaps the most important one, lost against an underdog from outside of the top 30. Nobody expected MOUZ to be defeated by 9z Team in the opening round, but the best-of-one format made it possible.
Other big teams, such as FaZe Clan, Team Vitality, Team Liquid, Team Spirit, and Natus Vincere won their opening matches and in some cases, their second match as well.
Group A Results
In group A of IEM Dallas, MOUZ lost 9 – 13 against 9z Team after a disastrous first half, which ended 3 – 9 on Nuke. Both Jimi “Jimpphat” Salo and Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek struggled in this match, finishing it with a score of 8 – 18.
They might be suffering from jetlag. Or perhaps the latest CS2 update might have messed up their calculations a little bit. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain what happened there.
Team Liquid defeated Complexity 13 – 6, largely thanks to Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken.
Team Falcons lost another important match but nobody was surprised, given that their opponent was G2 Esports. The score was 13 – 10 on Anubis. Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov single-handedly carried his team to a much-needed victory.
Unfortunately for him, in the second match of the group, his team ran into Vitality, who smashed them: 6 – 13 on Dust II and 5 – 13 on Anubis. In their first match, Vitality defeated Monte but needed overtime rounds to do it: 12 – 16 on Nuke.
G2 are currently playing with Jake “Stewie2K” Yip as a stand-in, so they cannot compete at their maximum capacity.
Group B Results
In group B, FaZe Clan had no problems against M80. The score was 13 – 6 on Ancient. Heroic, despite the recent roster change, had big problems against Virtus.pro on the same map: 4 – 13.
Team Spirit were expected to dismantle FlyQuest and they didn’t disappoint: 13 – 1 on Ancient. Danil “donk” Kryshkovets finished the match with a score of 18 – 7 and a rating 2.0 of 1.86.
Natus Vincere struggled a bit against BIG, but ended up winning 9 – 13 on Ancient. It seems that almost everyone decided to play this map on day 1 of IEM Dallas.
It remains to be seen what can Na’Vi do in their second match of group B, which will be played against Team Spirit. Most likely, they will be defeated.
