Three teams sweep opening matches in Elite League stage

Team Secret, Entity and nouns swept their first matches in the Elite League Swiss Stage competition, which began Sunday.

Secret swept Virtus.pro, Entity handled 9Pandas and nouns dispatched KEV.

Talon Esports, Heroic, Nigma Galaxy, Boom Esports and OG were the day’s other winners.

Sixteen teams are taking part in the Elite League Swiss Stage (Group Stage 1) using a modified Swiss system, which runs through Thursday. Nine came from closed qualifier seeds, and seven others were invited. All matches are best-of-three.

The top eight teams will move on to the Round-robin Stage (Group Stage 2), joining eight other teams that were seeded by invitation. That stage begins Friday, with two single round-robin groups of eight teams apiece. Those matches are also best-of-three.

The top two teams from each group will advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs, while the third- and fourth-place teams will go the lower bracket. The playoffs begin April 12, and matches stay best-of-three until a best-of-five grand final.

The winner takes home $300,000 from the $960,000 prize pool.

Secret won in 46 minutes on red and 40 minutes on green. Teng “Kordan” Tjin Yao of Singapore finished with a kills/deaths/assists ratio of 11.5/5.0.12.0 for the winners.

Both of Entity’s victories came on green, in 22 minutes and 46 minutes. Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov of Kazakhstan had a KDA of 15.0/1.5/8.0 for the winners.

nouns won in 30 minutes on red and 25 minutes on green, led by Yuma “Yuma” Langlet, a Nicaraguan/Belgian/German player, at 8.0/0.5/7.5.

In the other matches, Rest Farmers won its first map on green in 38 minutes, but Talon Esports took the second on green in 23 minutes and the third on red in 44 minutes.

HEROIC also had to come from behind. Tundra Esports took the first map in 38 minutes on red, before HEROIC took the second two, both on green, in 32 minutes and 54 minutes.

Nigma won its first map on green in 23 minutes, but Aurora bounced back to take the second one in 50 minutes on red. Nigma took the clincher in green in 27 minutes.

Boom lost its first map to PSG Quest, which won in 26 minutes on green. Boom then took over, getting green wins in 52 and 37 minutes.

OG also fell behind early, as Blacklist International played red and won the first map in 47 minutes. But OG came back with two red wins, in 33 and 26 minutes.

Elite League Swiss Stage standings:

T1. Boom Esports 1-0
T1. Entity, 1-0
T1. HEROIC, 1-0
T1. Nigma Galaxy, 1-0
T1. Nouns, 1-0
T1. OG, 1-0
T1. Talon Esports, 1-0
T1. Team Secret, 1-0
T9. 9Pandas, 0-1
T9. Aurora, 0-1
T9. Blacklist International, 0-1
T9. KEV, 0-1
T9. PSG Quest, 0-1
T9. Rest Farmers, 0-1
T9. Tundra Esports, 0-1
T9. Virtus.pro, 0-1

Prize Pool ($960,000):

1st — 300,000, TBD
2nd — $150,000, TBD
3rd — $80,000, TBD
4th — $50,000, TBD
5th-6th — $40,000, TBD
7th-8th — $30,000, TBD
9th-10th — $20,000, TBD
11th-12th — $20,000, TBD
13th-14th — $20,000, TBD
15th-16th — $20,000, TBD
17th-19th — $10,000, TBD
20th-22nd — $10,000, TBD
23rd-24th — $10,000, TBD

–Field Level Media