The big dogs prevailed on day one of play in Bucharest.
PGL’s first event of 2025 has kicked off with the first round of the $1.25 million event’s Swiss group stage coming to a conclusion.
It was a quick day in the office for most as six out of the eight series played were done in two maps, but some of the closer matchups on paper were quite hotly contested.
MOUZ show off their firepower
The day began with MOUZ showcasing their new addition, Lotan “Spinx” Giladi, for the first time since he was brought onto the team in a shock removal of Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek.
It was far from an easy match against BIG, who had Ancient in their hands at 12-7 only to lose it in overtime. It was Spinx’s first time playing Ancient in years, but he held his own, and the upside of this new lineup was on display with the new Israeli addition topping the board in the more comfortable Mirage affair.
Changes were bound to happen with Spinx now employing a more active role on the T side while Jimi “Jimpphat” Salo mostly remains the main lurker. That didn’t seem to be an issue, but Spinx is still wary of this transition.
“Overall, I will probably be more active sometimes,” he told HLTV after the match. “I think I can help the team more in this role. So far it was okay, but practice is really different than officials. When you’re active and you do take some control in officials, you’re probably a bit more scared.”
Falcons claim their first LAN win
Falcons took their first steps in BLAST Bounty and IEM Katowice and found the difficult opposition tough to deal with in the new lineup, suffering two losses to Eternal Fire (one online) and another to G2.
But Cluj-Napoca will offer them more of an opportunity to build confidence against lower opposition, and that was exactly the case in a relatively comfortable 2-0 over FlyQuest.
Nikola “NiKo” Kovač was in great spirits on Dust2, dominating the Australians with a 2.04-rated performance — not even his best map in the Falcons jersey.
“I feel really good about how we’re playing right now, and I would say we also felt good before Katowice for example, but there was a lot of pressure,” NiKo told HLTV after the match. “We were just a new team on LAN, we didn’t really know how to react to certain situations, what needs to be said, what needs to be adjusted, so I think we learned a lot of things from Katowice.”
The closest matchups delivered minor upsets
It was smooth sailing against a SAW team in shambles for FaZe, for whom the biggest takeaway was perhaps that Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski is still struggling in new roles on Nuke. The same could be said for The MongolZ and Eternal Fire, who brushed Complexity and Imperial Valkyries aside.
But the closer matchups on paper delivered on their promise. 3DMAX came away with a close victory over Virtus.pro, with new arrival Alexandre “bodyy” Pianaro, free of in-game leadership, providing crucial impact on T side Dust2 to lock down the 13-11 decider.
paiN and Astralis also went toe-to-toe, and in the end it came down to a stellar run from the Brazilians on the deciding Nuke from down 1-5 as well as multiple 5v3 fumbles from Astralis in a tight finish.
Wildcard stunned MIBR in a two-map affair, recovering from a horrid start on the CT side of Train to win the opener in overtime and dominating the Brazilians on Nuke with Love “phzy” Smidebrant and Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz in tandem.
Standings after round 1
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