The battle for two berths for second group stage in Group 1 has been the three-horse race as most predicted. The Australia Human player Phillip 'Filthy' Edwards failed to deliver enough damage to the China Orc pair Weiliang 'Fly100%' Lu and Liwei 'xiaOt' Sun in upper bracket semi-finals and lower bracket final respectively and became the first one eliminated from the tournament.

Hyeong Ju 'Check' Lee played exceptionally well on his way to the next stage. The Korea Night Elf veteran clinically executed his Druid of the Talons strategy throughout his game against his former team-mate xiaOt. Though the wNv Teamwork player killed both Check’s heroes in the middle of the game and built his own expansion later, Check gained the upper hand in the decisive crossfire with his brilliant hero protection and usage of Scroll of Healing. Winning the game after killing xiaOt’s Blade Master, Check joined Fly100% in the group upper bracket final.

The upper bracket final between Check and Fly100% was not as exciting as expected, however. The mTw captain beautifully surrounded his opponent’s Blade Master with his Demon Hunter and several Wisps and forced Fly100% used his Scroll of Town Portal. Check had the game under his belt ever since then and Fly100% typed gg when he saw Check attacking with massive bears.

The consolation final between Fly100% and xiaOt meant only one of them would survive. xiaOt acknowledged mirror game was his biggest weakness several times before and he began to opt for Night Elf when he faced another Orc player since WCG2008 China finals. Today is not an exception. However, things didn’t work as well as last time for xiaOt when he defeated the Colorful player Shenghui 'Future' Li with Night Elf, the Mousesports player dominated the whole game and sent xiaOt out of the tournament after an 18-minute game.

The tournament will continue two days later with Group 2. Starting at 12:00 CET, Du Seop 'WhO' Chang of mTw will take on the Korea Undead player Yong-Gyun 'Gyunah' Kim who earlier knocked out Tim 'HLA' Gebel of Raptor Gaming and Nan 'ForDream' Xie of Level99 in the qualifier. The battle of Human between Jong Seok 'ReprisaL' Lee of All For One and Xuwen 'infi' Wang of World Elite will take place shortly after.