To quote the immortal words of legendary Swedish CS mastermind vesslan: "upsets always occur". While one may not always be able to pin down from which direction it will come there is seemingly always at least one upset in every major tournament to feature a wide variety of teams.

Even if those upsets sometimes remind us that competitive CS' limits are a little more glaringly obvious than those of certain other FPS or RTS titles they also add in that extra spice of uncertainty to every big tournament. No matter how precisely the machine is assembled there is always a wrench that can be thrown into the works to bring things grindingly to a screeching halt.

Cindarellas lines up; The perfect draw

When the ESWC 2011 groups were drawn I was pleasantly surprised to see that each of the elite teams (AGAiN, SK and Na`Vi) had somehow been drawn with two other teams who could at least potentially cause an upset in how the group played out. I even felt a little suspicious that perhaps there was more than happenstance in how perfectly the groups seemed to have been setup for all of the underdogs. Yet as the first day for CS ends there have been no upsets in sight.

In Group A the mighty Poles of AGAiN might have come in with their ASUS Summer, e-Stars Seoul and SEC titles in tow but they found themselves matched with a Lions swe team who had pushed them to the absolute limit at the aforementioned ASUS event, with four overtimes in the series the Poles narrowly took. Then you can throw in an ESC Gaming swe team who perhaps, I optimistically postulated, could potentially take down Lions on the right map and you have a recipe for possible fireworks. We didn't need ESC to be capable of beating AGAiN, we just needed Lions to be capable of beating AGAiN and then ESC of beating Lions.

Over in Group B a similar landscape could be painted as SK Gaming , the dominant team of most of the Summer, were lumped into the mix with their Russian nemeses and a Ukrainian team who have plenty of upsets under their belt in the CIS region. Moscow Five not only have beaten SK previously but they have more importantly always been able to play SK close, thanks to how the stylistic matchup plays out, and thus the Russians are always in position to potentially steal a map.

Somehow ESWC had found the one team outside of the elite trio which had the best chance of beating SK in a single map sitting and paired the teams up. Then they'd thrown in the same DTS who have given Na`Vi fits at times and had beaten M5 at ASUS Spring in May of this year in a Bo3. Again we surely had a scenario which could be setup for the second best team to beat the best and then be beaten by the third best. M5 beating SK seemed one of the least unlikely upsets and then DTS beating M5 also looked to be a solid possibility, again setting up a nice bloodbath for first as the group came to a close.

Nothing to see here folks, move along

With all of these matchups in place surely there would be at least one upset across both of the groups? As it turned out that wasn't to be the case at all and things played out pretty much according to the script of who was better and who was expected to win overall. ESC were living off the strength of their name, which doesn't match their lineup now that kalle has departed. This was proven to be the case as they lost convincingly to Lions. Likewise in the other group DTS were take care of by M5 without even breaking 10 rounds. So far no chance of an upset or juice to go around.

The top two teams matched up last of all in both groups, again leaving me a little suspicious about how random the drawings had been. I mean personally I'm all for setting things up in this manner so it is as exciting as possible, as opposed to the two best teams playing in the first match and removing most of the excitement of a group, but let's at least be up front if that's what we're doing. AGAiN waited until the second half against Lions and then pushed it into high gear and blew past the Swedes, who had no answers for the Polish lockdown defense.

Moscow Five fared a little better as they managed to turn a six round T half on forge into a 13:13 game against SK. Sadly for them, and anyone hoping on an upset, getting the game tied wasn't enough and SK turned it on at the end to close out the game before being really put to the test. Even that result seemd a little bit of a tease as M5 have always played close games with SK, even when they've lost, so if the most likely upset couldn't come through perhaps it's understandable none of them did.

Still, when we look at the day's play it does seem as though we got cheated of some potential excitement. As a purist I tend to prefer it when the best team wins, which often means the best team overall, assuming nothing crazy happened in the match, but even I must admit today was a little too by the numbers.

Hope's flame flickering but not yet extinguished entirely

The group stage is not done just yet though, with two more groups to be played out tomorrow. The only problem is that the other two groups seemed the least likely to produce upsets. Natus Vincere managed to get a WinFakt Fi and Anexis eSports draw which makes the Ukrainians topping their group a very strong possibility.

Meanwhile fnatic and Mousesports will likely battle over who comes top but it was hard to believe anyone would challenge them for those two spots. On paper perhaps one could have hoped for Team ALTERNATE to upset their fellow countrymen of mouz but that proved to be a faraway dream as mouz put the boots to the ex-mouz players 16:8. Virus Gaming may not have any name recognition but carrying the monsterous mSx and two other WCG gold medalists it wasn't complete insane to imagine perhaps they could get one over on fnatic or mouz if the right map draw came. That seems very unlikely now that ALTERNATE tossed them around 16:7 on nuke.

Can WinFakt summon a performance reminiscent of their SEC semi-final as they rematch Na`Vi tomorrow? Will anexis show they still have some fire even without Friis' sniping as they battle the Finns for second? Will Virus bring a better effort when they play the two big dogs of their groups or will it be more of the same for the underperforming Frenchmen? Can ALTERNATE do anything against a fnatic team which beat the best German team only weeks ago in the IEM VI Guangzhou final? If we're still hoping on an upset things look a little slim, but the favourites aren't out of the woods just yet.