Recap: Day 1 of Paris Major qualifiers

7-4-2023 10:35

Let's recap the first day at the RMRs in Mongolia, Denmark, and Mexico in all their chaos and surprises.

A disastrous first day in Mongolia

There isn't much to report from the opening day of the Asia RMR other than that it was a disaster.

Outside of some audio issues and brief technical pauses on the broadcast, everything appeared to be going reasonably well during the first match, in which The MongolZ comfortably passed their first test against Twisted Minds. But from there it all went sideways as persistent server issues caused the second match between Rare Atom and VERTEX to be paused with no resolution. Five hours passed before the organizers postponed the paused match and the rest of the opening day fixtures to day two.

Teams at the Asia RMR waited around for hours before they learned they wouldn't play until the second day

In the early stages of the technical issues Andrew "⁠kaze⁠" Khong began to feel ill and ended up having to receive medical attention, and it was announced that Rare Atom's coach, Xielin "⁠k4Mi⁠" Zhu, would step in for the AWPer for the rest of the match. In the end, no more rounds were played, though, and kaze is now ready to play.

Asia RMR Day 1: As it happened

B8 take Europe by storm

The European RMR day one was the only one to run smoothly. The first day brought a few surprises, the biggest of which was B8's run to the 2-0 pool and their Ancient upsets over MOUZ and Virtus.pro, spearheaded by 18-year-old AWPer Artem "⁠r1nkle⁠" Moroz.

The two British representatives, ranked last and next-to-last, also took many by surprise. Into the Breach head to day two with a 1-1 record after first bringing Natus Vincere to their limit in a double-overtime affair and beating the struggling Sprout in the second match. Though still winless and now sitting on a 15-match losing streak, Viperio also impressed as they narrowly missed out on a first-round upset against fnatic after another double overtime.

cptkurtka023 embraces r1nkle after B8 upset MOUZ in the opener

Sixth-highest-ranked team OG now heads to early elimination matches after losses to FaZe and GamerLegion, along with Viperio, SAW, and Sprout.

FaZe made it out of the opening day unscathed but were made to work for their 2-0 record by Apeks, as a 30-bomb performance from Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool and one of the top plays of the day from the Estonian prevented an Overpass upset. Their toughest test is yet to come, though, in the form of a qualification match against Natus Vincere.

Here are all the results from day one of the Europe RMR.

EU RMR A Day 1: As it happened

More issues at the Americas RMR

Though far from the mayhem of the Asia RMR, the Americas RMR in Monterrey, Mexico, also went far from smoothly as only half of the matches scheduled for day one ended up being played. Power issues delayed the start by nearly two hours, which eventually caused round two matches to be postponed to the second day, and other technical issues plagued both the teams and the broadcast.

Once the action finally got underway, the four highest-ranked teams of the tournament passed the opening round with no issues, as Liquid, FURIA, Complexity, and paiN picked up comfortable wins to start the tournament.

It's all thumbs up from vorborg after EG passed Imperial on the first day

Things were more interesting in the mid-field. Coming in as a last-minute replacement for DETONATE and likely without much focused preparation, Evil Geniuses beat Imperial and will face off against Brazil's No. 1 team, FURIA, next. MIBR got taken off-guard by Flamengo and pulled off an impressive comeback from down 11-15 only to lose the match after double overtime. BESTIA and Fluxo round out the 1-0 pool after close wins over North American opposition Nouns and yur, respectively, and will face off against one another in round two.

As only five Major spots are up for grabs in the Americas, teams who suffer second losses will be eliminated from the tournament, which means four teams will be out of contention on the second day

Americas RMR Day 1: As it happened

HLTV Live coverage

HLTV.org has teams at each location in Ulaanbaatar, Copenhagen, and Monterrey to bring you interviews and photos from the tournaments. Here's all the content we released on day one:

Galleries
Asia RMR - Day 1
Europe RMR A - Day 1
Americas RMR - Day 1

Interviews
Vincent "⁠Brehze⁠" Cayonte: "It was demotivating to not play as well as I used to; I'm just hoping to get that ball rolling again"
Frederik "⁠acoR⁠" Gyldstrand: "This is one of those opportunities we need to jump on"
Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella on tech delays: "It was pretty stressful, but I'm glad that we could keep it together"
Artem "⁠r1nkle⁠" Moroz: "We're feeling way better than we were at the last RMR"
Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub: "I feel like I never left"
Tom "⁠arTisT⁠" Clarke: "Knowing that we can compete against the best is going to do wonders"

Performance of the day

The performance of day one goes to ropz, who helped FaZe stave off an Apeks upset on Overpass. The Estonian won a key 1v3 clutch to help recover a rough start on the offense and hit the 30-kill mark in FaZe's 16-13 victory in the second round of the Europe RMR A.

Score: 30-1-15
Rating: 1.62
Impact rating: 1.63
Clutches: 1v3

Highlights of the day

Day 2 set to start

Day two is ahead of us and you can look forward to live updates, interviews, photos, content from behind the scenes, as well as a another recap like this at the end of the day once action concludes at the Americas RMR.

Here are some of the highlight matches of the next 24 hours:

First elimination matches
14:00 OG vs. SAW
14:00 Sprout vs. Viperio
23:30 Imperial vs. TeamOne
23:30 MIBR vs. 00NATION
03:45 yur vs. Nouns
03:45 Paquetá vs. Solid