Today we saw the first round coming out from the Gold event, where the 32 teams, ranked #16 through #48 overall, compete for their $8,900 prize money this cycle and a chance to get promoted to Diamond next cycle. With teams such as Shit Happens, Call It Karma and Fack You Kurdi atop the seeding one could see them making it through in the top 4 this cycle, but their competitors will not make it easy for them. Goobys, A Touch of Class, Team Please, Another Dimension, Clan One Day, Frenchies and MerryMenOfArabia are all entering this cycle with the mindset and ability to give contention for those top 4 spots.

Looking to the other leagues briefly we will be keeping an eye on who is entering Gold league from the Diamond and Silver leagues respectively; whoever loses both their matches today in Diamond will be knocked down to Gold.

In Silver we have several teams expected to rip through their competition and make it into Gold for next cycle, these teams being Isot Pelit, Druidz eSports and Orange eSports. After ORGE’s performance at DHW I'm sure other teams are going to be nervous facing them, but will the ping difference make a big enough impact on their play?

Throughout the day even though attention was placed onto the Diamond league mostly due to the compLexity versus Domain of Pain match, we still managed to have several good matches go through in gold. We saw ThiUnknown take out Team Please in the first round and You Only Hook Once take out A Touch of Class also, with Fack You Kurdi and Goobys going 2-0 over their groups knocking Clan One Day and Stats Matter to the losers bracket.

By the end of the day we see, Cowbomb eSports, Clan RaGe CaKeS, TroubleWithTribbles and Proud to be hated fall out due to forfeits, Stats Matter, TeaM FurY, and A Touch of Class joining them falling to the Silver League.

One of the most interesting series was the one between team ThiUnknown. and You Only Hook Once, going to a full 3 games. In the first game we saw ThiUnknown play a very strong Parasite but their Silhouette failed to take off and ended up losing to the Zephyr, Plague Rider and Tempest ultimate combo. The second game was even more interesting with ThiUnknown drafting a Pandamonium who seemed to make short work of mzry and company on You Only Hook Once.

Despite mzry going 25/9 with The Dark Lady, Gwefix responded with a 17/6 Pandamonium who had Shrunken Head, Nullstone, Behemoth Heart and Portal Key, as well as...The Dark lady's Doombringer. At the end of Game 3 we saw ThiUnknown outplaying their opponents with a Magmus, Keeper of the Forest, Engineer, Plague Rider and Silhouette line up.

In Sunday's Winners Bracket we will see Frenchies versus MerryMenOfArabia, Call It Karma versus The Big Boys, Fack You Kurdi versus Another Dimension, and Shit Happens versus ThiUnknown.

Stay tuned for updates tomorrow!

- Crowslaw
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