

The stage and audience during the match. (More photos on Flickr.com)

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Team Dignitas and HellRaisers had the honor of opening the first public day of play at EMS One Katowice, having both confidently come out on top of their respective groups. While Dignitas dethroned Fnatic, HellRaisers caused the first major upset by taking down Titan, thus sending home one of the tournament’s big favorites early.​The first half started with a slick offensive move by cajunb, who replaced Nico in the liveup after DreamHack Winter. Waiting in the lower catacombs for HellRaisers to make their move, he caught two of them completely unprepared, not only taking them out but also securing Dignitas a solid lead for the first few rounds. Thanks to their great defense, the first half went to Dignitas by 10-5. Another good pistol round backed up by some great plays took Dignitas to 14 rounds before markeloff and his team were able to fight back, bringing the score up to 14-7. The next round featured an incredibly close fight, with Dignitas defending the bomb long enough to bring them the 15th round and eight match rounds. The Danes managed to close the game in the following round, winning by an impressive 16-7.​Starting as CT, Dignitas deftly took the third pistol round of the series, building up a 6-2 lead as both teams took two series of three round each. However, HellRaisers fought back in the following rounds, managing to plant the bomb and defend it despite being outnumbered. After looking like the score might end up 8-2 for Dignitas, the Ukrainians started picking up round after round, taking over the lead and managing to finish the first half 9-6 in their favor. AdreN especially carried the team at this point, but in the second half Dignitas managed to snatch fourth out of four pistol rounds, bringing the score up to an even 9-9 before pushing even further. The score was 13-9 when HellRaisers struck back to try and keep their playoff dreams alive, with device, who joined cajunb on the top fraggers list for Dignitas, bringing the score up to 14-10 after dramatically turning a one on three into the 15th round for the Danes. Despite still having a few surprises up their sleeve, however, Dignitas ultimately won the game with a solid score of 16-11.Despite the presence of a few flaws, Dignitas were obviously well prepared for this tournament, the individual skill of cajunb and device backed up well by the rest of their team. Dignitas appear more than ready to take on other top teams, and in a post-match interview, FeTiSh said "it feels impressive to finally be able to show our skills after DreamHack". After "already exceeding expectations" and making it out of the group, he said he’s eagerly looking forward to a good match against whoever comes their way next.Find all details about the events such as brackets, streams and more on csgo-emsone.com