CS2 Perfect World Shanghai Major Opening Stage Recap

The first set of matches for the Counter-Strike 2 Perfect World Shanghai Major are in the books, with some shock eliminations and a historic run by one of the hottest teams in the world at the moment. With a prize pool of $1,250,000 and being hosted in China for the first time in CS history, the Valve-sanctioned tournament promises to be one for the books. From big wins to the most painful of losses, here are some of the biggest stories from what went down in the CS2 Major Opening Stage:

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All images sourced from HLTV.

Asia’s Finest Takes On the CS2 World

TheMongolz quickly made a name for themselves in the Opening Stage by absolutely blowing their competition out of the water with a 3–0 sweep. Many people rated them highly and thought they would do enough to qualify for the Elimination Stage, but no one quite thought they would do so undefeated. TheMongolz played four maps in total and completely dominated every single time they logged onto the server from start to finish, racking up an immeasurable number of kills while handing losses to fellow Asian team Rare Atom, longtime Brazilian organization MIBR, and 2023’s BLAST.tv Paris CS Major runners-up GamerLegion in the process.

fnatic and Imperial Fall Winless

If you told someone that both fnatic and Imperial failed to qualify for the Elimination Stage, they probably wouldn’t be shocked. But to do so without winning a single match is the real surprising part. Both teams shared equally disappointing results on the opening day by losing 5–13 and 11–13 to their two opponents; fnatic succumbing to Wildcard and Cloud9 while Imperial got handed defeats by paiN and FURIA. The two organizations’ trips to China only lasted two days as they would experience a heartbreaking conclusion to their run after the 0–2 pool elimination series with fnatic losing 1–2 in their final match against Rare Atom and Imperial tanking another lopsided defeat this time against Complexity. They are definitely good teams and have earned their spots in the Top 30 ranking of the world; however, sometimes, CS just has a way of making the unexpected possible.

China’s Representative Goes Out Swinging

Rare Atom were the only Chinese representatives at the Shanghai Major, making it even sweeter for them to perform in front of their ever-supportive home crowd in a historic first for Counter-Strike. Though they didn’t quite get close to making the Elimination Stage and bowed out of the competition with a 1–3 record, their presence alone was enough to give their nation something to cheer for. An extra plus was their singular match victory, which came on Day 2 of the Opening Stage against fnatic, with Rare Atom pulling off a 2–1 series win to knock out their European opponents and keep their Major dreams alive for one extra day. The team’s performance in the Opening Stage gave their dedicated home crowd a special memory to cherish for years to come and served as a reminder that out of the millions of teams that have played in a CS Major, a complete underdog team was able to stand toe-to-toe with the world’s best.

Liquid Makes a Strong Start to their Campaign

The other 3–0 team that joined TheMongolz in the undefeated pool was Liquid, who had to earn their stars through some extremely competitive matches. Their Day 1 games against Cloud9 and Wildcard both ended with a score of 13–10 in their favor, which set up a second day qualification match against FlyQuest. They dropped the first map but quickly fixed their aim and comfortably secured both Anubis and Nuke, the two remaining battlegrounds in the map pool, to finish with a perfect sweep in the Opening Stage of the Perfect World Major, marking it one of their best results in recent memory and at the most coveted tournament in CS2 at that.

What’s Next For The Elimination Stage?

The rest of the playing field played out their events as expected, with only a few other surprises here and there. The full list of all eight qualified participants for the second stage of the new Major format were TheMongolz, Liquid, paiN, FURIA, GamerLegion, MIBR, Wildcard (who made their debut in the competition), and BIG. Those who did not have the same luck and were sent packing from Shanghai were Complexity, Passion UA, FlyQuest, Cloud9, Virtus.pro, Rare Atom, fnatic, and Imperial.

Best Players of the Opening Stage

It might be cheating to list down an entire team, but the sheer dominance they displayed also makes it unfair not to give them their flowers. The entire TheMongolz roster deserves their place on this list as the best players of the Shanghai Major’s preliminary round. As a matter of fact, four of the five members namely Munkhbold “Senzu” Azbayar, Ayush “mzinho” Batbold, Sodbayar “Techno” Munkhbold, and Usukhbayar “910” Banzragch registered the four highest HLTV ratings across the four maps they played so far in the tournament while the team as a whole garnered a whopping 1.50 average rating. Another memorable shoutout is Felipe “insani” Yuji who was undoubtedly the hard carry of MIBR, supplying the world with numerous memorable highlights to enjoy as the Brazilian squad toughened it out for one of eight spots available.