Jönköping Major Day 2 Key Takeaways: TSM in serious trouble, Team Liquid, w7m, and Wolves flying high

^{Image: Ubisoft/Kirill Bashkirov}

With Tuesday’s games now completed, here’s a quick summary of the day’s action.

The top teams

Day two ended with Team Liquid and w7m esports on 12 points with a perfect 4-0-0-0 record. Wolves Esports, meanwhile, have 11 as they dropped one against Mirage, while Soniqs have nine due to a single loss against MNM Gaming.

Looking at just day two, the following teams won all six points available; Soniqs, Wolves, Spacestation Gaming, Heroic, Team Liquid, and w7m. While this was expected from many of these teams coming into the tournament, Spacestation stand out as they went from zero points in day one to six in day two. 

Heroic are likely the overall team of the day, as they have made themselves serious playoff contenders with a 7-1 victory over TSM. 

Heroic and TSM are now tied on six points in second and third place. Tomorrow, they both play SANDBOX -- who they’ll likely beat -- and Team Liquid -- who they’ll likely lose against. With Heroic holding the head-to-head over TSM, this puts Heroic in an excellent position to make it to the playoffs even if they fall to Liquid.

The bottom teams

In total, six teams lost both games they played today; MNM Gaming, Mirage, SANDBOX Gaming, TSM, FURY, and BDS.

Other than TSM, who have already been mentioned, the big outliers here are BDS, as they fell 4-7 to SSG and 5-7 to w7m. While these were admittedly very hard matches, this puts them in third place behind SSG and without a game against SSG tomorrow to make up the difference. Their fate could be out of their hands.

While FaZe Clan did not lose both of their games, they were stunned by Dire Wolves in 3-7 fashion -- a result made even more bizarre given the fact that the APAC team’s coach had to leave to fly home before their match due to his examinations. FaZe are now in a similar predicament as BDS in Group D, albeit with a better round difference putting them in second place.

The absolute worst day was for SANDBOX, as the Koreans were wiped 1-7 against Heroic -- their second 1-7 loss of the tournament -- before squandering a 5-0 lead versus Liquid to lose 5-7. SANDBOX remain one of only two teams with zero points at the moment alongside FURY.

The players

The best player of the day was w7m’s Diego "Kheyze" Zanello.

While he was already the top rated player after day one, on Tuesday he earnt a 2.02 SiegeGG Rating against FURY and a 1.47 Rating against BDS. The former game saw him end with 19 kills to five deaths across 10 rounds. If the game was any closer he likely would’ve broken records. Against BDS, he also secured 16 kills, while Stéphane "Shaiiko" Lebleu and Théo "LikEfac" Mariano only combined for 17.

This means Kheyze now has a 1.43 kills-per-round frequency compared to the second highest at 1.18. He also leads by kills, kill differential, entry kills, entry kill differential, and is joint third by clutches, and fourth by KOST percentage. He is dominating this tournament so far despite sitting in a hard group.

On the flipside, APAC players now make up the bottom six by SiegeGG Rating with Olivier "Renshiro" Vandroux and Bryan "Merc" Wrzek being their own regions’ lowest Rated players. Brazil’s worst player has been Black Dragons’ Vinicius "Patoxy" Lima, but he’s still only the 20th worst player overall out of 80 total.

Play of the day

While four aces took place during day two, the best play of the day came from Wolves’ Yanis "Mowwwgli" Dahmani, as his included four kills in 10 seconds across two floors that saw him chase down the final kill.