Correction: This story originally stated that Robert "Wobbles" Wright and Joseph "Mang0" Marquez were guaranteed to advance out of the group stage. That is not the case. It has been updated to reflect this.



With the dust settled, the first four Smashers have left the temple of the five gods defeated, and five others have ascended to finals contention.

With their 2-0 records going into day two of the tournament, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney, Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman, Weston "Westballz" Dennis and Justin "Plup" McGrath are guaranteed a spot in either the playoffs bracket or Top 8.

Both Kevin "PPMD" Nanney and Weston "Westballz" Dennis will be advancing out of Group B. PPMD started the day with a clean 3-0 win over Kevin "PewPewU" Toy in a Marth mirror match, then went on to take a 3-1 win over Mustafa "Ice" Ackakaya's Fox and Calptain Falcon in the players' first ever tournament match against each other.

Meanwhile, Weston "Westballz" Dennis kept up his near-perfect record against Ice with a 3-1 win, and took a close 3-2 win over PPU. While PPU took the first two games of the series, Westballz brought it all the way back with a reverse sweep and took PPU's last stocks on Final Destination. Going into the tournament, Group B was considered by many to be the group of death, with PPMD, Westballz and PPU all strong contenders to make Top 8.

With their matching 0-2 records and 2-6 game differentials going into Saturday's matchups, both PPU and Ice no longer have a shot at advancing past the group stage.

Group D's matches turned out similarly. M2K and Plup swept through their matches. Plup took two clean 3-0 wins over Johnny "S2J" Kim's Captain Falcon and Michael "Nintendude" Brancato's Ice Climbers. M2K also defeated Nintendude 3-0, but dropped one game against S2J on Pokemon Stadium, ending the series 3-1.

Like PPU and Ice, S2J and Nintendude's 0-2 records mean any hopes they had of reaching the playoffs bracket are gone. However, Plup's 6-0 game differential puts him at the top Group D at the moment, not M2K. M2K and Plup will play on Saturday to determine who will be seeded into the playoffs group and who will qualify directly into Top 8, but Plup has only ever won one tournament set against M2K.

Daniel Rosen is a news editor for theScore esports. His counterpick is playing Home Run Contest until he gets bored. You can follow him on Twitter.