Esports Betting / Esports Betting News / A rundown on the IEM Sydney 2023 Europe Open Qualifier 1. What went down?

A rundown on the IEM Sydney 2023 Europe Open Qualifier 1. What went down?

Sports Writer

Publish Date: 11/08/2023

Fact checked by: James Leeland

Many teams are fighting for a spot in the IEM Sydney 2023 during the Open Qualifiers. Here we’ll talk about the Europe Open Qualifier 1, which had the presence of a few large organizations like Furia, Sprout, Spirit, and BIG – none of which were able to follow through to the Closed Qualifier stage.

CSGO Players

The Teams

As is common on Open Qualifiers, many underdogs arise to shoot their shot against some of the biggest names in the CSGO scene. Here’s a list of all 16 teams that participated in this qualifier:

Upper Bracket	Lower Bracket
Furia	The Prodigies
Sprout	500
Space	BetBoom
faceaters	ECLOT
Victory Zigzag	Into the Breach
9 Pandas	Falcons
BIG	Spirit
B8	Insilio

Round of 16

Following what we see in almost every Open Qualifier, the matches here were played as Best of 1s – a scenario that opens doors for the underdogs to play the map of their lives and secure a spot, which is exactly what happened…

Going from top-to-bottom in the upper brackets we saw:

Sprout beat Furia in a close game (16x14)
Space takes down faceaters in overtime (19x16)
Victory Zigzag win a close 16x14 against 9 Pandas
BIG wreck B8 with a 16x1.

As for the lower brackets:

500 won against The Prodigies (16x11)
BetBoom destroyed ECLOT (16x3)
Into the Breach also left no chance for Falcons (16x5)
and last but not least, Spirit cruised through the match with Insilio on a comfortable 16x6.

Quarter-Finals

Victory Zigzag Logo

Almost every game here was close, except for the battle between Into the Breach and Spirit – which ended with a score of 16x6 in favor of Into the Breach. As for the others, we saw two 16x14s in Victory Zigzag (winner) x BIG and 500 x BetBoom (winner) and a 16x13 on Sprout x Space. Keep in mind that, up to this point, Bo1s were the path to take.

Semi-Finals

Here, the first and only Best of 3s took place, and the winners would be going to Europe’s Closed Qualifier for IEM Sydney. The first spot was granted to Victory Zigzag for beating Sprout in a close 2x1 series (16x14, 5x16, and 16x12). The second and last spot was given to BetBoom, who also had to work for their 2x1 series (16x8, 11x16, and 16x14).