Winstrike, Gambit YNG, Syman & Team Spirit advance to CIS Minor – Rio 2020

The first game day of the closed qualifying round for CIS Minor - Rio 2020 has come to an end, which presented both confident victories of the favorites in the face of Winstrike, Gambit Youngsters, Syman and Team Spirit, and some unexpected results.

One of the most experienced teams in the CIS, Nemiga has lost to 1WIN without a chance to be the favorites in the lower bracket. If tomorrow the game of the Belarusians will not improve, we will wintess another failure of this team on the way to the main tournament of the season. forZe have been the main favourites of the whole cycle of CIS Minor - Rio 2020, but now the team is obviously in a slight down in game form: at the end of February they have not successfully perfomed at DH Open in Anaheim, a week ago they were defeated by Team Spirit at WESG 2019-2020 Russia Finals, and now they are one step away from the departure, losing to Winstrike, who are going forward to their first major tournament under the leadership of Dmitry "hooch" Bogdanov as head coach. The main underdog of the tournament Espada passed pro100 and fought on equal terms with Team Spirit - another favorite of the selection. Pro100 is likely to take the lead over SG.pro and fight in the decisive match with forZe, which suggests that at least one holder of direct intakes in the closed phase of qualification will not go to the regional championship in Rio de Janeiro.

We took a comment from Syman player David "n0rb3r7" Danielyan, whose team on the first game day of qualifying guaranteed participation in CIS Minor - Rio 2020.

In the first game it took us a while to catch our pace. We stepped into the game when we've made the comeback from the score 14:8.

As for the game against Hard Legion, on Overpass we couldn't show our best game, we were a bit lost. Mirage played confidently, leaving no chance to the opponent. On Inferno, we got off to a slightly wrong start on the defense side, and only after a pause did we understand how to play against them.As for communication in English, I can say that we are already used to talking like this on FPL, so we have no problems.

The current bracket of closed qualification:

List of CIS Minor participants - Rio 2020:

 Winstrike
 Gambit Youngsters 
 Syman
 Team Spirit
Finalist of the closed qualifier #5
Finalist of the closed qualifier #6
Finalist of the closed qualifier #7
 Finalist of the closed qualifier #8

CIS Minor - Rio 2020 will take place from April 26 to May 2.