ESL UK Premiership Summer – Xpra & fish123 qualify

After a fun filled, action packed, quality two nights for the UK CS:GO scene, fish123 & Xpra have managed to secure themselves two spots in the qualification tournament known as Promotions.

It was a two night journey for 64 teams in the ESL UK Premiership Summer Season Qualifier Cup 1 (Pete needs to get this shortened somehow), what started at 7pm was the usual stomps as you can imagine, a lot of lower level teams just getting smashed left right and centre. Viperio were one of the big shock casualties in Round 1, despite not being favourites to win a qualification spot, they had an outside chance of making a bit of a push deep into the second night. They lost 16:8 to SHOGUN eSports. The price of best-of-one or just not good enough is up for others to decide.

All the expected teams managed to navigate themselves through to Round 2 including CAZ eSports, Ben & Friends, Molotovs & Marshmallows, Reason.UK, and of course Xpra. Round 2 is where another shock & surprise managed to take down the big guns CAZ eSports, who were one of the strongest favourites to win this cup to make it easier to prepare for Promotions soon. However, Xpra managed to stage a small comeback at 13:11 down and on eco, they turned an impossible task into a match winning round by collecting that round to stage their comeback in some inspiring fashion. They suddenly put CAZ on the back foot on de_cobblestone, and eventually ran out winners 16:14 thus securing CAZ had to play the second qualifier.

As another shock happened in Round 2, many had wondered if the same could ultimately happen to them too, going forwards. There wasn’t any shocks in Round 3 however a couple of teams who I would have expected to go a little deeper uFrag & 2seXeh managed to fall short in Round 3 losing to Girls Generation and Molotovs & Marshmallows respectively.

MCM London – What all the teams should expect at the finals

Quarter Finals stage began tonight, with Xpra pushed all the way by Girls Generation at 16:11 on de_inferno, whilst Ben & Friends managed to navigate themselves past a mix team of sorts featuring Finnish talent in the form of jOELZ, with a 16:12 win on de_dust2. Reason.UK managed to smash unexpected quarter finalist team, aptly named team2 16:3 on de_cache. Whilst fish123 managed to beat out rivals Molotovs & Marshmallows 16:12 on de_mirage. It might of been a tough pill to swallow for both JT & vertiGo after putting up some fight in that match.

By the Semi-Finals, it was crunch time for all teams involved, Xpra who already took out one big team had to face a mix who had some fierce weaponry to boot in the form of quiver & Boaster who both could topple various players in the UK, and that was Ben & Friends who had a relatively smooth ride up to the quarters. In the other Semi-Final the new Reason.UK side would square up to fish123 in arguably the toughest match to call out of the two Semi-Finals, and let’s just say, it truly delivered some quality action between the sides with it stretching into overtime on de_cache. Reason had to chase the game for much of the match, with them being outplayed in the first half. But they managed to somehow take it to overtime with some big teamplay being used. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough as fish123 ran out 21:19 winners. Xpra however proved to be too classy for Ben & Friends and managed to be one of the two teams in the Semi’s make it through to the Promotions Tournament by beating them 16:11 on de_cobblestone.

Hopefully Cup 2 will deliver further shocks and surprises next week, don’t forget if you haven’t signed up to Cup 2, you can do right until 6:30pm next week. You can do so here.