ESL One Cologne day 1 recap

Today, the best of the best in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive faced off in one of the first Tier One Tournaments since the player break: ESL One Cologne 2020. Cologne was originally scheduled for July but got pushed back and moved online due to COVID-19. Here are the results from day one.

EU Group A

In Group A, Big (#1) lost to Sprout (#40) 2-0. This match is the third time in a row that Big has lost to Sprout, despite their number 1 ranking that they have had for the past seven weeks. Next, OG (#13) won 2-1 against NIP (#12) in a series that went for 104 rounds. At the beginning of map one, OG looked dominant before slowing down the pace. For some time, it seemed as if IGL Hampus “Hampus” Poser figured out how to counter until OG put up five rounds to force overtime and then won 19-16. Nevertheless, NIP managed to force map three, where the trend continued. OG would put together a string of rounds before NIP would do the same and eventually ended up going to overtime, where OG closed the series 22-19.

EU Group B

Despite Astralis’s (#11) roster change for ESL One Cologne, Astralis steamrolled Fnatic (#6) 16-5 with Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen and Emil “Magisk” Reif leading the charge with a total of 40 kills. The two new players, Patrick “es3tag” Hansen and Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen did their part in the game, winning a 2v4 and a 2v5 versus Fnatic. Next, on Train, Fnatic finally woke up, but Bubzkji played incredible, dropping 31 kills over the 36 round map to close the series for Astralis. Last, to no one’s surprise, Vitality’s Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut pushed straight through Team Heretics 2-0. Richard “shox” Papillon chimed in with two incredible clutches saving his team and ending the series 49-34 and with a 1.46 rating.

Astralis roster for ESL One Cologne

NA Group A

On the American side of things, Furia (#6) took on Chaos (#28) in what should have been an easy win, given that Furia won against Chaos 4 days ago in Dreamhack Open Summer. However, in the time between Dreamhack and ESL One Cologne, something changed. The result was quite the opposite. On Nuke, Furia was able to put up an even CT side but crumbled on T side, only getting three rounds in the second half. Furia and Chaos were neck and neck throughout the map, and in overtime, Chaos managed to get the upper hand winning them the series.

In the final matchup of the day, 100 Thieves (#18) and Gen.G (#15) faced down in a very even game with some crazy rounds, as seen in the video below. However, Justin “jks” Savage gave his team an extra nudge topping the server with 29 frags and tried pushed for a 2-0. Kenneth “koosta” Suen dropped 28 kills to shut down this idea as Gen.G took map two despite the wishes of AWPer Gratisfaction, who looked dominant throughout the map. The third map was a toss-up as 100 Thieves have not played Gen.G on Inferno before, but Gen.G was in the lead 8-1. However, in the end, they could not put up a good CT side which allowed the Thieves to take them down.