Entropiq and paiN topped their respective ESL Challenger Melbourne groups, securing spots in the tournament's playoffs on Sunday. The Russian squad did so by beating Wings Up in their opener before taking down Group A favorites OG in the winners' match. paiN defeated Grayhound in their opening match in Group B and then repeated the feat against their Imperial compatriots, who are playing their first event with 24-year-old Marcelo "chelo" Cespedes. Entropiq took down OG 16-13 to secure a spot in the playoffs The first team to be eliminated from the tournament was EG White, who fell in their opener to Entropiq 4-16 before losing to Wings Up 0-2 on Nuke and Inferno in the Group A elimination match. The Group B elimination match bween two local sides, Grayhound and VERTEX, will kick off Saturday's matches, the winner of which will then face Imperial in the group's decider match later in the day for a spot in the playoffs. In Group A it will be OG and Wings Up who will play the decider for one of the spots left in the playoffs. Entropiq's riflers were the highlight of the opening day in the stats department, with the four of them among the top five highest-rated players, although it is paiN's Felipe "skullz" Medeiros who leads them all with a 1.49 after two best-of-ones. The schedule for the second day of play is the following: Saturday, September 3
03:00 VERTEX vs. Grayhound 06:30 - OG vs. Wings Up 10:00 - Imperial vs. VERTEX/ Grayhound winner
Championship Sunday will begin with the playoff semi-finals, in which Group A's top seed Entropiq and Group B's paiN will meet the second seeds from their opposing groups, which will give way to the best-of-three grand final at 08:00 that will bring the tournament in Australia to its conclusion.  OG #8  Nemanja 'nexa' Isaković Adam 'NEOFRAG' Zouhar Shahar 'flameZ' Shushan Abdul 'degster' Gasanov Maciej 'F1KU' Miklas  Imperial #29  Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo Fernando 'fer' Alvarenga Ricardo 'boltz' Prass Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes Vinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo   Felipe 'skullz' Medeiros Age: 20 Team: paiN Rating 1.0: 1.03 Maps played: 378 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.65   VERTEX #108   Liam 'malta' Schembri Toby 'BRACE' Barnes Peter 'BL1TZ' Athanasatos Jordan 'pz' White Christian 'ADDICT' Pendleton   Wings Up #67   Yi 'gas' Ding Liu 'lan' Qi XueBing 'B1NGO' Dai Zhengjie 'Martin' Zhuo Junhao 'ChildKing' Peng  Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes Age: 24 Team: Imperial Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 917 KPR: 0.72 DPR: 0.66  Entropiq #32  Nikolay 'mir' Bityukov Aleksei 'NickelBack' Trofimov Vladislav 'Krad' Kravchenko Aleksei 'El1an' Gusev Igor 'Forester' Bezotecheskiy Time is adjusted to your selected timezone   EG White #57   Jonathan 'djay' Dallal Jonathan 'Jonji' Carey Ben 'ben1337' Smith Josh 'PwnAlone' Pigue Wesley 'viz' Harris   paiN #33   Vinicios 'PKL' Coelho Wesley 'hardzao' Lopes Rodrigo 'biguzera' Bittencourt Felipe 'skullz' Medeiros Romeu 'zevy' Rocco  Grayhound #44  Simon 'Sico' Williams Jay 'Liazz' Tregillgas Alistair 'aliStair' Johnston Joshua 'INS' Potter Declan 'Vexite' Portelli |