Amidst the eliminations, Astralis also secured a direct spot in the quarterfinals after defeating 3DMAX.
Day five of ESL Pro League Season 19 has come to an end, with several teams bowing out from the competition in Malta after a cutthroat day of play. Among the day's casualties are Eternal Fire, TYLOO, Fnatic, exiting at the hands of SAW, M80, and Virtus.pro, respectively.
The day was not filled with eliminations, however, as Astralis now looks forward to a direct spot in EPL's quarterfinals after convincingly defeating 3DMAX.
These results have set up two rematches in Group A and B's Last Chance Stage, with Virtus.pro and SAW set to battle it out in the Group A 4th place decider, while G2 and M80 meet again in the last match of Group B's lower bracket.
Virtus.pro's match against Fnatic featured one of the closest maps of the aforementioned elimination matches, as the two sides engaged in a bitter game of tug-of-war on Fnatic's pick of Vertigo. In the end, Denis "electroNic" Sharipov and his new teammates emerged victorious on their opponent's pick after forcing overtime.
fnatic were able to keep things close on the T-side of Anubis, but once Virtus.pro secured their place on the offense, the game was wrapped up shortly thereafter, with Dzhami "Jame" Ali's troops storming ahead to a 2-0 win.
The next two elimination matches would prove to be fairly straightforward. The first of these was M80's meeting against TYLOO, where the North American side was blown out to start on TYLOO's pick of Inferno, unable to recover as the Chinese side closed it out 13-7.
Despite the poor start to the series, M80 quickly rebounded in the remaining two maps of the series, allowing TYLOO to procure just four rounds across Ancient and Overpass thanks to stellar work from Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa and Michael "Swisher" Schmid.
Shortly thereafter, SAW's series against Eternal Fire kicked off, with the former side charging ahead on the Turkish squad's pick of Vertigo. Although Eternal Fire briefly retorted on the T-side, SAW's 9-3 lead from the first half proved to be too much to overcome. Nuke went even better for the Portuguese side, as Christopher "MUTiRiS" Fernandes's men sent Eternal Fire packing with a 13-3 scoreline.
The only non-elimination match of the day, between Astralis and 3DMAX for a spot in the quarterfinals, proved to be just as straightforward as most of the rest of the day's games.
Although the French side showed some signs of life on their pick of Inferno, Astralis were in control throughout the series, stealing away Inferno with a 13-7 scoreline before wrapping things up with a 13-3 win on their pick of Ancient.