Everyone was focused on the first group featuring one of the scariest lineups from the past few years of CS but really all the action took place in Group 2. Four teams battled it out with some surprising results up and down the field. Center stage went to reformed zEx whose recent additions of simonz and spaz proved critical.

“Since CPL we have had a few roster shakeups, picking up spaz and simonz has definitely given life to zEx again,” said Dan Aimetti. “Overall, with the limited amount of practice, I think we played pretty good. Our teamwork has been getting a lot better over the last week with our new lineup.”

The other big story was the play of Rival and D!E. Both were coming off of huge CPL performances where they took the US, if not the world, by storm. This wasn’t a rare occurrence even though most of the world may have seen it that way.

Out West, these two teams have been the toast of the conference; winning most LAN events in sight including a stop in Dallas the weekend before CPL with a 1, 2 finish at Lethal Gamers’ Complexity CPL Pre-LAN event. Rival even won the CAL-I Championship just before the start of CPL to give the team its' second CAL-I title in its' history.

Still, that doesn’t explain their troubles yesterday. Neither team looked good as both teams dropped matches to Meepins and struggled against zEx. The only thing that resembled the past play of these teams was their match against each other where they tied 15-15 in what has become a spirited rivalry.

“We all knew that it was just for seeding and we aren't really scared to play anyone in the tournament, so maybe we didn’t take it as seriously as we should have.” said Matt “PaTyoJoN” Iantosca

Aimetti agreed, warning teams such as u5 who faces them in the Quarterfinals to not take them lightly because of a bad opening day.

“Rival and DiE are still good teams. Just because they lost a few online matches doesn't mean much. Playing either one of those teams is always a tough match and it was yesterday as well,” said Aimetti.

The second place team in the group has seen the most controversy as accusations have been floating around about Meepins. GGL today cleared Meepins|spag of any wrong doing as Octinium played a big role. Octinium is an anti-cheat program similar to the old screenshot system for Punkbuster first used by The Rush tournament last weekend. Still, questions persist around Meepins who played excellent in their opening day going 2-1.

“Everyone already knows what I think of Meepins, so it's not worth talking about it again. We beat them and that’s all I care about,” said Aimetti.

GGL’s map selection process for the opening pool play round had mixed reactions. The process used IRC’s Chanserv to create random numbers “!d 50” with the higher number receiving their first selection on throwing out one map. Five maps were used; de_inferno, de_dust2, de_train, de_nuke and de_cbble. Teams alternated throwing maps out until one map was left.

“I don’t like doing it because teams need to be good on all maps,” said Dave “moto” Geffon, “not just whatever they think is important.”

EG’s Owner Mohammad Ocean seem to see the benefit in the system especially in pool play where matches are often decided by which map ends up being selected.

“I think the system employed by the GGL for map selection was sufficient for the pool play bracket. Creating a veto showdown where captains opt out the maps they don't want always narrowed the choice down to one map that both teams could agree on,” said Ocean, “Although it can create some repetition and be disadvantageous if a team gets to watch you play a match on a map you later end up drawing against them, ultimately this has to be accepted as the paradox that all tournament map selection processes must face.”

Coverage has been loaded for the tournament with both TsN and iTG pulling double duty. Numbers have been right around CAL-I regular match nights for the initial pool play round for shoutcasting. HLTV wise, GotFrag received over 1,000 viewers at one point during the four simultaneous broadcast matches during its' 9pm matches and had a total of 12 matches all covered during the night each with at least 250 viewers per match. Scorebot channels peaked at around 700 for #GOTFRAG while the other three GGL based channels, #GGL-CS, #GGL-Live1 and #GGL-Live2 all broke 300 at one point during the night. Numbers and interest should go up as the matches get larger.

Tonight’s matches in the QuarterFinal round were scheduled to take place at 8pm EST and 10pm EST. Those time slots were pushed back at the request of the players who couldn’t get home from work and school soon enough. Most pre-game stuff will still get started an hour before the matches with each broadcast station having their own start times, check community news posts for those.