After the first weekend of action, we now know who is going to the playoffs, and who is just going home. Just six teams remain in the running for one of the highest prizes in recent years, the $400,000 grand prize. The competition will pause for 4 days, until the playoffs start on Friday.

Three teams from each group made it to the playoffs. For Group A, that is G2, Gambit & Virtus.pro. With Gambit & Virtus.pro heading to quarter-finals, however as G2 won the upper bracket final, that'll take them to the semi-finals. Over in the B Group FaZe, Natus Vincere & Astralis made the cut, with FaZe & Astralis heading to quarters, and Natus Vincere to semis. Between the two groups, 50% of the surviving teams are from the CIS region, and the other 50% are from Europe. Throughout the 4 days we saw teams hit highs and lows, with dreams either shattered or made. For FaZe fans, they certainly had dreams made after months of failing to deliver almost anything and tumbling in the rankings putting up strong showings in all their matches. With such a huge spread of talent between all teams in the tournament, we were treated to match after match of some of the best Counter-Strike seen in recent memory, with multiple matches going to multiple overtimes. It's also been refreshing to see the number of viewers for these group matches, with upwards of 250,000 fans tuning in to the multiple streams for the Natus Vincere vs Astralis Group B upper bracket final.

Over on the bus home, we have some huge names including Vitality, Liquid, NIP, BIG, FURIA & mousesports, who were the unlucky team who were the first to find out their place on the bus had been reserved. All teams who got to this point will take home a minimum of $10,000 for their efforts thus far. With mousesports, Renegades & Complexity getting $10,000 for the 13-16th level, then Liquid, NIP, Vitality & FURIA take home $16,000 for 9th-12th, and lastly, Heroic & BIG receive $24,000 for 7-8th.