This article is part of our CS:GO Recap series.
The group stages of IEM Oakland kicked off Wednesday with Group A. After each team played its five games in this round-robin format, only three of the six teams came out on top to advance to the playoffs. Astralis (4-1) topped the group, while Immortals (4-1) and G2 Esports (3-2) rounded out the top three.
Astralis may have started out the day on a bit of a sour note, losing its first game of the day to G2, but it certainly hit its stride when it needed to. It came out strong in the next game with a big 16-1 win over Team Liquid behind the massive 23/6 performance from Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz. It then took down Natus Vincere by a fair margin,16-9, before coming up against Immortals, who are on a bit of a hot streak as of late. Even though the game went into overtime, Astralis came out on top by a score of 19-15, with Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjaerbye putting up a 30-bomb and putting out an ADR of 82.9. Astralis ended its day with another strong 16-9 win over TyLoo.
Immortals, who made its way to this tournament with a strong performance at iBUYPOWER Masters 2016 this past weekend, continued to play well on Day 1 of the tournament. Its only loss of the day came in an extremely close overtime battle against Astralis towards the end of the day. One thing to keep an eye on as the tournament moves forward is that Immortals have played at least 30 rounds in four of their five games, with three of those going into overtime. Immortals did win three of those games, but it certainly wasn't as easy as the team would have liked.
G2's road to the playoffs came down to a closely contested overtime game against Liquid. Both teams were 2-2 going into this final game, with a spt in the playoffs on the line. In the final round of overtime, Liquid's tournament run was on the line, with a 1-vs-1 between Nick "nitr0" Cannella and Alexandre "bodyy" Pianaro set to decide their fate. nitr0 was in a great spot to take down boddy and get the defuse, but he picked up a shotgun instead of a rifle, which allowed bodyy the chance to just dance around to run down the clock and secure the win and a spot in the playoffs.
Na'Vi was the biggest disappointment of the day, as many experts had them pegged to make the playoffs, but they ended up fifth in the group. It seemed as though the team just couldn't band together and play as a cohesive unit, which left it completely out of sorts against most teams. It's now back to the drawing board for Na'Vi as the team will be forced to watch the rest of the tournament from the couch.
TyLoo also had a disappointing run during the first day of competition. While the team hasn't done too much in terms of major competition yet, it has begun making waves during qualifiers. It made its way to IEM by placing top-4 at the iBUYPOWER Masters event last weekend, and seemed poised to at least take a couple games in their respective IEM Oakland group. Unfortunately, that didn't happen as they lost all five games of the day. They took Immortals and Na'Vi to 30+ rounds, but could never get over the hump and take a game.
Group B will hit the stage on Thursday to determine the last three teams to compete in the playoffs at IEM Oakland. The action will kick off at 1:30 EST with SK Gaming taking on Heroic in the first match of the day.
