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
* Starting times are to be announced

IEM Rio 2023



Finn 'karrigan' Andersen
Håvard 'rain' Nygaard
Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Helvijs 'broky' Saukants
Robert 'RobbaN' Dahlström
Maximiliano 'max' Gonzalez
David 'dav1deuS' Tapia Maldonado
Santino 'try' Rigal
Dion 'FASHR' Derksen
William 'mezii' Merriman





Lotan 'Spinx' Giladi
Abay 'HObbit' Khassenov
Adam 'NEOFRAG' Zouhar
Maciej 'F1KU' Miklas
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