Vitality and fnatic suffer overtime losses in IEM Rio Group B opening round

OG and FURIA squeezed through in the headline matchups of the second group in Rio de Janeiro.

The best-of-one phase of IEM Rio has concluded with Group B passing the opening round of play and not all favorites surviving their first tests.

FaZe and Cloud9 were heading into the tournament still fresh off the Paris Major-qualifying bout that saw Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's team prevail just two days ago, but despite arriving in Brazil less than 24 hours before their matches the two biggest names in the group put fears of a tired start to bed with landslide victories over 9z and MIBR.

Meanwhile, the more closely-matched affairs in OG vs. Vitality and fnatic vs. FURIA delivered in heaps with both matches going to overtime.

Despite the best efforts of Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire, who top-fragged on Overpass against Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov and company, OG came out on top as everyone pulled their weight in a great team effort.

FURIA just squeezed past fnatic in their match on Ancient with Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan on top of the charts. The Brazilians could not convert three opportunities to close the match in regulation, but they did it with a flawless defense of the B bombsite in overtime.

Group B now moves to the next round, where the four winners will fight for playoffs spots in the upper bracket while four teams face elimination in the lower in Tuesday's matches:

Next group B matchups

Upper bracket
FaZe vs. FURIA
OG vs. Cloud9

Lower bracket
9z vs. fnatic
Vitality vs. MIBR

* Starting times are to be announced