Day 1 of the Esports World Cup Last Chance Qualifier wrapped up with eight teams punching their tickets to the 32-team playoff bracket from Groups 1-8. The headline: BC.Game — with legendary AWPer s1mple as its centrepiece — survived a rocky opener to advance.
Advancing to playoffs (Groups 1-8)
- Inner Circle (Ukraine)
- BIG (Germany)
- DENDELE (Brazil)
- HOTU (Russia)
- Betclic (Poland) — fresh off winning Stake Pulse Beat I
- BC.Game (Europe) — s1mple's project
- HEROIC (Sweden)
- fnatic (Ukraine)
BC.Game — the s1mple factor
BC.Game dropped their first map to BASEMENT BOYS on Nuke before turning the series into a 2-1 win over 1win to secure the group. Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev continues to headline the roster with a career map load of 1,905 maps and a career HLTV rating of 1.23 — still one of the highest sample-sizes in professional CS.
The Day 1 upsets
The bracket's biggest surprise came in Group 6, where Iberian Soul (the ex-Gentle Mates lineup competing under a temporary tag) fell to 6666 in the first round. Eternal Fire also went down 2-1 to NADE from North Macedonia — the only HLTV-ranked heavyweight to hit Saturday's elimination bracket.
Day 2 preview
Groups 9-16 open bo3s including 100 Thieves and Team Liquid among the featured teams competing for the remaining eight playoff seats. Four of those 16 playoff qualifiers will earn spots at the $2M EWC main event that starts August 12 in Paris; the other 12 split $100,000 across placings 5-16.
