ESFI World

The first day of the IEM 5 World Championships has come to a close and we are at the halfway mark of determining which teams and players have survived the group stage. To see all of the scores from each group, click the group stage images below or visit the Score Center.

Counter-Strike 1.6

In Counter-Strike 1.6, two of the three Swedish teams, and most probably the two which were favored, have secured themselves a place in the playoffs after SK Gaming (first in the group with 3 wins, 0 losses but 2 draws) and Fnatic (third, 3 wins and 2 losses) survived their tough group. Sandwiched in between the two in second place is the other favorite: Natus Vincere. The Ukrainians, last season's defending champions, finished with 3 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw. Eliminated from contention are Lions, redCode and Evil Geniuses. The two latter teams only managed to win one match out of five.

Tomorrow, the matches in Group A will be played. mTw, Moscow Five, UMX Gaming, Complexity Brazil, TCM and Frag eXecutors will begin play at 09:10 CET (4:10 AM EST).

StarCraft 2

The story of the day in StarCraft 2 was the dominance of Group A's only South Korean player, Ace. He "aced" his group, going undefeated and winning all five matches. In fact, he never even dropped a single map to any of the players. Second place belonged to the now ex-GSL foreign star IdrA, whose only blemish came from his match versus Ace.

An equally important storyline coming from the group was the three-way tiebreaker situation that formed when Tarson, White-Ra and MorroW all finished with 2 wins and 3 losses. When the tiebreak rules were applied, MorroW was the one to move on, leaving White-Ra and Tarson behind with a dejected qxc, who lost all of his games.

Tomorrow, Group B includes two current South Korean competitors Squirtle and Moon, both of who recently lost their latest matches in the GSL. Joining them in the group will be European Championship winner SjoW, along with mOOnGLaDe, Fenix and Socke, who is filling in for the injured DeMusliM.

Quake Live

Just when everybody was thinking that the dark horse of this group, if not the entire Quake Live tournament, would be dandaking, Spart1e surprised us all when he went 4-1 in his group. Even more surprising was that the one loss came only to dandaking. That's right: he beat cooller, rapha and cypher. With cooller also securing his spot in the playoffs with his four wins, it left a critical match between rapha and cypher (both with two losses at the time) to decide who would advance forward and who would be shockingly eliminated from the championship.

After a nail-biting three-map series that saw an almost countless amount of overtimes, rapha was the one to pull off the victory and keep his hopes alive for a back to back IEM Championship. You can read more about the match between rapha and cypher here.

Read more coverage from the IEM 5 World Championships at the event page.