ENCE and NIP grab vital wins to close Paris Major first round
Aside from the marquee matchups, we also saw Apeks and Grayhound earn upset victories.
The first round of the BLAST Paris Major has concluded, and it was Ninjas in Pyjamas and ENCE who secured victories in the marquee matchups of the round, against MOUZ and OG.
Neither of the matches were particularly close, with ENCE utterly decimating OG 16-6 on Anubis whilst Ninjas in Pyjamas strolled to a comfortable 16-9 win on Mirage. ENCE and Ninjas in Pyjamas will now face off later today for the chance to go 2-0, whilst MOUZ and OG will do battle to avoid being on the brink of elimination.

In the A stream matchup Ninjas in Pyjamas produced a potent 11-4 CT half on Mirage to put themselves firmly in control of the game, Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen in particularly shining in the early rounds to help get his team going. Fredrik "REZ" Sterner caught up as the game progressed, and the duo ensured MOUZ struggled to string rounds together throughout the entire match. MOUZ did look a bit more comfortable on their own defense, but they were nowhere near strong enough to prevent a 9-16 defeat.
Over on the B stream, ENCE dominated OG from start to finish on Anubis, their 12-round T side ensuring OG had only the slimmest of hopes of a comeback in the second half. Pavle "Maden" Bošković and Paweł "dycha" Dycha both produced some spectacular highlight plays to ensure such a dominant showing for ENCE, whilst Álvaro "SunPayus" García was a menace with the AWP. Abdul "degster" Gasanov did produce a couple of special moments of his own to earn OG some rounds, but it was merely a consolation for the European squad.
Elsewhere in the first round there were two major upsets, with Grayhound taking down FORZE and Apeks besting Liquid. Grayhound had to recover from a woeful 3-round offense on Mirage against FORZE and they did so with aplomb, posting a stonewall 13-round defense to complete an epic comeback. Liquid put up a better fight against Apeks, but a poor showing from Keith "NAF" Markovic consigned the North Americans to a 12-16 loss.
The rest of the round one results can be seen below:


















Martin 'STYKO' Styk
Joakim 'jkaem' Myrbostad
Tim 'nawwk' Jonasson
Justinas 'jL' Lekavicius
Damjan 'kyxsan' Stoilkovski
Jakub 'kuben' Gurczyński
Marco 'Snappi' Pfeiffer
Guy 'NertZ' Iluz
Álvaro 'SunPayus' García
Eetu 'sAw' Saha

Adam 'NEOFRAG' Zouhar
Jon 'JDC' de Castro
Ádám 'torzsi' Torzsás
Mareks 'YEKINDAR' Gaļinskis



Daniil 'headtr1ck' Valitov
Simon 'Sico' Williams

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