MarcaRegistrada shock Party Astronauts in ESL Challenger Katowice Open Qualifier
Last night the open qualifier for ESL Challenger Katowice concluded, seeing the 49 teams in the bracket whittled down to the final two advancing into the Closed Qualifier. While the top of the bracket was largely standard fare, seeing Legacy come out on top against a number of top ESL Challenger League teams, the bottom half of the bracket saw Mexican ESEA Advanced squad MarcaRegistrada claim a number of upsets to make their way into the Closed Qualifier in shock fashion.
Looking at the bigger picture, the first three rounds of the qualifier already saw a number of notable squads face elimination, with E-Xolos LAZER besting MIGHT 13-7 on Mirage, MarcaRegistrada claiming a close 13-11 win on Dust2 against Take Flyte, and most shocking of all, timbermen falling to Illya "supa" Filanchuk's RazDva mixteam 13-9 on Mirage, seeing timbermen continue to struggle with their recent additions.
In round four NRG kicked things off with a one-sided 13-5 win against E-Xolos LAZER on Ancient while Legacy secured a narrow 13-10 win against BOSS on Ancient thanks to a leading performance from Bruno "b4rtiN" Câmara.
The next match to conclude saw Party Astronauts barely pull through against Aether, winning Anubis 16-14 in a shaky fashion that was a sign of things to come. Meanwhile, MarcaRegistrada claimed another win with a 13-4 takedown of RazDva on Ancient.
Moving into the qualification matches, Legacy claimed the first of two spots with a 2-0 win over NRG, seeing the latter team fail to make LAN once again in another relatively uninspired performance. Inferno, Legacy's map pick, saw the Brazilians start in the driver's seat with a 9-1 lead on their T-side, using this lead to carve a dominant path to a 13-7 win.
Anubis began with Legacy once again in the lead, starting their T-side off with a 7-0 before NRG found the last five rounds to close the deficit to two rounds. Despite this map overall being closer, NRG would only manage to find the lead once in the back half of the map before Legacy powered ahead to secure Anubis 13-11 to lock in a Closed Qualifier berth.
LegacyNRG| Legacy |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Eduardo 'dumau' Wolkmer |
37 - 22 | +15 | 98.2 | 81.8% | 1.61 |
| Guilherme 'saadzin' Pacheco |
35 - 23 | +12 | 74.7 | 81.8% | 1.34 |
| Bruno 'b4rtiN' Câmara |
34 - 31 | +3 | 90.0 | 77.3% | 1.30 |
| Bruno 'latto' Rebelatto |
32 - 24 | +8 | 73.7 | 81.8% | 1.21 |
| Gabriel 'NEKIZ' Schenato |
30 - 31 | -1 | 73.3 | 72.7% | 1.05 |
| NRG |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Josh 'oSee' Ohm |
29 - 33 | -4 | 74.1 | 68.2% | 0.97 |
 Jadan 'HexT' Postma |
27 - 35 | -8 | 77.8 | 65.9% | 0.93 |
| Vincent 'Brehze' Cayonte |
26 - 35 | -9 | 68.8 | 70.5% | 0.88 |
| Timothy 'autimatic' Ta |
25 - 32 | -7 | 64.2 | 70.5% | 0.85 |
| Nick 'nitr0' Cannella |
24 - 34 | -10 | 51.8 | 56.8% | 0.79 |
The second series between MarcaRegistrada and Party Astronauts has a far more interesting affair from the onset, as the Mexican-Venezuelan squad start off on Dust2 with a narrow 7-5 lead on their T-side before playing a really scrappy CT-side that allowed the squad to secure their map pick 13-11, shocking Party Astronauts' new lineup in the process.
On Party Astronauts' map pick of Inferno, the top ECL team aimed to make everyone forget what had just happened by way of a dominant performance on their T-side, winning the opening half 9-3 before posting a perfect CT-side to claim the map 13-3.
With the series tied up, many would have expected PA to have shaken off the loss on map one and head into Anubis in a dominant fashion. However, the exact opposite scenario seemingly played out, with Arturo "AMC" Morales Carrasco leading the charge on his team as MarcaRegistrada started the Egyptian map off with a 9-3 lead on their T-side. After switching sides, Party Astronauts would attempt to get back into the map by winning three out of the first four rounds however the gap was too wide to cross for the Astronauts, with MarcaRegistrada keeping their opponents at bay to secure a 13-8 win and the largest upset of their careers.
Marca RegistradaParty Astronauts| Marca Registrada |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Arturo 'AMC' Morales Carrasco |
60 - 35 | +25 | 84.8 | 65.0% | 1.37 |
 Marcos 'Jardani' Contreras |
37 - 42 | -5 | 75.2 | 71.7% | 1.05 |
| Jorge 'b1' Treviño |
38 - 45 | -7 | 80.2 | 71.7% | 1.01 |
| Taylor '4TAYLOR' Alexander Calvin Marchan |
33 - 47 | -14 | 68.2 | 71.7% | 0.92 |
| Jose Luis 'Majesticzz' Salazar |
25 - 47 | -22 | 56.8 | 65.0% | 0.70 |
| Party Astronauts |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Bogdan 'ogwizard' Savula |
47 - 35 | +12 | 86.6 | 78.3% | 1.31 |
| Justin 'FaNg' Coakley |
46 - 40 | +6 | 79.8 | 78.3% | 1.25 |
| Jaxon 'Peeping' Cornwell |
48 - 41 | +7 | 85.0 | 81.7% | 1.24 |
| Gage 'Infinite' Green |
42 - 39 | +3 | 72.8 | 76.7% | 1.10 |
| Ben 'ben1337' Smith |
31 - 39 | -8 | 62.7 | 80.0% | 0.94 |
With Legacy and MarcaRegistrada locking in their spots in the ESL Challenger Katowice Closed Qualifier, the opening matchups today will be:
M80 v. MarcaRegistrada Nouns v. Legacy
The Closed Qualifier is set to start today at 05:30PM.
