All you need to know about the Blast Spring Groups 2023: Day 1
Blast Premier: Spring Groups 2023 commenced yesterday 19th January with the group stage actions. Organised by BLAST, it is the first S-tier CS:GO offline event tournament which is taking place in Copenhagen. The tournament holds a prize pool of $177,498 which will be shared among all 12 participants who are competing in this tournament. A two-stage format is being followed, mainly the Group Stage and Play-in Stage. All 12 teams are divided into 3 groups of four teams each. The main action commenced yesterday with Group A opening the matches that were the Upper Bracket Semifinals. As of now, Evil Geniuses and Team Vitality won their respective fixtures and made it to the Upper Bracket Final.
Group A match recaps
The day began with the Upper Bracket Semifinals which consisted of a best of 3 game series. The first game of the day was between Heroic vs Evil Geniuses. And later, the second game of the day was between Team Vitality vs Astralis. The stream is available on BLAST Premier’s official YouTube channel. A detailed match recap is provided below –
Heroic vs Evil Geniuses
(Best of 3 scores: 1-2)
Game 1: The opening map of the game was Inferno. Heroic made a dominating start as the first half got over with a score of 11-4. Evil Geniuses players were unable to hold on and Heroic made it 5-3 in the second half. The game got over and Heroic claimed the win by 16-7.
Game 2: Both teams faced each other on the Ancient map. Evil Geniuses started to take control of the game and made it 4-11 in the first half of the game. Heroic tried to make a comeback in the second half as they made it 10-5 but as the scores were different Evil Geniuses won by 14-16.
Game 3: Overpass was the map where these teams met again. Evil Geniuses made it 6-9 in the first half, the second-half score remained 8-7 and Evil Geniuses won the game by 14-16.
Team Vitality vs Astralis
(Best of 3 scores: 2-0)
Game 1: The game began on the Overpass map. Team Vitality made it 9-6 in the first half and in the second half, they made it 7-6. With this, Team Vitality cemented their win.
Game 2: The second map of the game was Vertigo. Astralis led the first half with a 5-10 lead but Team Vitality made it 10-5 in the second half to level the match. The match went to overtime and with a good finish of 19-15, Team Vitality won the game.
The Group A Upper Bracket Semifinals concluded with these above-mentioned matches. Evil Geniuses and Team Vitality made it to the Upper Bracket Final and the losing teams, Heroic and Astralis will face each other in the Lower Bracket Semi-final. Group B matches will be live today.