It's Night Two of the opening round of Playoffs, and Night One certainly delivered. We saw two close matches, two overtime matches, and coincidentally, the higher seed walking away from all four matches the victor. Do you think tonight's results will be similar? I do. I personally don't see any upsets tonight, but you never know, and I've been wrong before.

(#15)iDemise vs. (#2)X3O
The first match of the night is likely to be a solid one, if X3O captain dRew's opinion is concerned.

“From playing them, the team that stood out to me (as an up and coming team) was iDemise (how ironic it is we play them Round 1 of the playoffs). They have really put in the time practicing during the season and I've seen a lot of progress from them even though the score was a bit lopsided in the match.” explained dRew.

As I spoke to dRew, he explained that while he liked iDemise as a team making progress, he wasn't looking to misstep against them, explaining that X3O had been practicing 3-4 hours a night, 4-5 days a week. He made sure to add, that while he thinks X30 will bring their A-game, you can never underestimate anyone in Counter-Strike, and I thoroughly agree.

(#13)Statutory Rape vs. (#4)underestimated
Speaking of underestimation, here is ESEA's favorite sons taking on the majority of the new JMC lineup, underestimated. I suppose it's worth noting that most of the fans out there would like to see JMC's lineup in this event (especially considering their less than stellar results against eMg for CEVO placement) but as far as I'm aware, ue chose to play with this lineup for the remainder of the season.

Without going against dRew's comment I agreed with above, I really feel that ue will still walk away with this match, and it could possibly be the quickest match of the night. Who knows though, Statutory Rape could have been ESEAing all night long, polishing their skills and honing their craft. I wouldn't hate to see the upset.

(#1)BombSquad vs. (#16)EFFECTED
The age old top versus bottom, number one seed versus the sixteenth. EFFECTED likely doesn't stand too much of a chance here. They've struggled against both strong teams that they've played in ESEA (Sway Gaming and underestimated) and I expect to see them follow suit against the former Frag Dominant team. The captain of BombSquad, iNERTiA, shared a similar opinion as dRew, regarding getting ahead of themselves in the bracket when they have to take it one match at a time.

“We've never played against EFFECTED, so where I would like to say that we're going to beat them with little to no trouble at all, realistically it's Online Counter-Strike and anything can happen...”

Always prepare for the worst in Online Counter-Strike, I think we all know how that works.

(#11)snailtrail vs. (#6)Gravitas
The final match of the night features one of the teams that I can honestly say is the most feared in the league, Gravitas. One constant throughout every conversation I've had with different players in the leagues is that they all regard Gravitas to be the top of the ladder, regardless of that #6 seed. What does this mean for snailtrail? That's a good question. My problem with snailtrail is that they haven't quite. They've proved that they can really mix it up with the top teams in the league, but for whatever reason, they have yet to really show me that they can cement themselves as a top 10 team in the league yet. Still, they stay consistent for the most part in the regular season, and that's worth at least the confidence to not rule them out yet.


As always, there will be irc scorebots, live website scores, box scores, and demos from every match. GotFrag will also be providing expanded HLTV coverage for each match, so stay tuned for HLTV information and read on for some information about Season 2 (CS 1.6, Source, and TF2!).

When you're done watching the matches tonight, be sure to let your teammates know that the ESEA League Season Two signups will begin immediately following the Season One Final, opening Monday, January 12th.