It was a day full of shocking results in Paris.
Two favorites,порнография как искусство two surprises a win away from playoffs
"We play better versus the better teams" Nick "?nitr0?" Cannella said after Liquid made it through the Challengers Stage unconvincingly, recovering from 0-2 to 3-2 and advancing to Legends without a single win over a European team. Unlike with his previous interview, he didn't jinx his team this time.
Liquid started this stage hot, dealing with 9INE on Overpass convincingly before Mareks "?YEKINDAR?" Ga?inskis's 2.00-rated masterclass on Inferno dismantled Natus Vincere, seeing the North Americans go into the 2-0 pool. Matching their score was another team we didn't expect to see go flawless after the first day, Monte. The Viktor "?sdy?" Orudzhev-led team first upset FURIA and then edged out fnatic to find themselves in reach of playoffs.
The other two names in the 2-0 pool won't surprise you too much. Vitality is one of them, securing two hard-fought wins over G2 (on Nuke) and ENCE (on Vertigo), with Mathieu "?ZywOo?" Herbaut pushing his teams toward the playoffs on home soil. The other is HEROIC, who have consistently made it to playoffs of big events and are looking to do the same in Paris after beating FaZe and Apeks, the latter putting up more of a fight.
Read more Monte, Heroic, Vitality move into 2-0 pool No one saw these 0-2 matchups coming
On the flipside, the elimination games on the second day of Legends Stage action will feature the following four teams: FaZe, G2, 9INE, and FURIA. This quartet was placed in the top 10 of our writer's power ranking before the tournament started. How did we get here?
It all started with somewhat unreasonable seeding, which matched up FaZe and G2 against HEROIC and Vitality, respectively. After their initial losses, bouncebacks were expected from the big dogs, but instead, they dropped the ball. G2 had a 10-5 lead against Bad News Eagles on Ancient, but fell apart after Sener "?SENER1?" Mahmuti clutched a 1v3 in the pistol, seeing the game slip out of the favorites' grasp in a chaotic affair.
FaZe, on the other hand, never looked in control versus Into the Breach, trailing from the start as Joey "?CRUC1AL?" Steusel and Cai "?CYPHER?" Watson powered the British team to victory. Joining the 0-2 pool are 9INE, who failed to deliver on their promise and pre-event hype, falling to Liquid and GamerLegion, while FURIA face elimination after an abysmal opening day on which they managed to go 0-17 on the offensive sides against Monte and Ninjas in Pyjamas.
Read more FaZe collapse against Into the Breach; fall into 0-2 pool 
Read more FURIA in Paris: Zero T-side rounds after two maps 
Read more BNE mount T-side comeback to upset G2 in Paris Standings after day one
Group Legends Stage 2W - 0L
HEROIC 
Liquid 
Monte 
Vitality 
1W - 1L ENCE 
fnatic 
Ninjas in Pyjamas Apeks 
Natus Vincere 
Into the Breach GamerLegion Bad News Eagles 0W - 2L G2 9INE FaZe FURIA Day two matchups
2-0 pool
| Date | Matches | |
|---|---|---|
| BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 | ||
| 14/05/2023 | HEROIC13:55 Liquid | Match |
| 14/05/2023 | Monte14:00 Vitality | Match |
1-1 pool
| Date | Matches | |
|---|---|---|
| BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 | ||
| 14/05/2023 | Natus Vincere11:30 Ninjas in Pyjamas | Match |
| 14/05/2023 | fnatic11:30 GamerLegion | Match |
| 14/05/2023 | ENCE12:45 Into the Breach | Match |
| 14/05/2023 | Apeks12:55 Bad News Eagles | Match |
0-2 pool
| Date | Matches | |
|---|---|---|
| BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 | ||
| 14/05/2023 | 9INE17:00 FaZe | Match |
| 14/05/2023 | FURIA17:55 G2 | Match |
Player of the day
A few candidates stand out from the crowd for player and performance of the day. One is ZywOo, who unsurprisingly led the way in Vitality's run to the qualifying matches with a 1.47 average rating across two close matches. Guy "?NertZ?" Iluz, Lotan "?Spinx?" Giladi, and Joakim "?jkaem?" Myrbostad also finished high in the stats table on the back of an impressive first day.
The performance of the opening day of the Legends Stage could only be given to one, however, and it goes to YEKINDAR for quite possibly the biggest carry performance of the Major so far.
Albeit staggering already, the match-wide 2.00 rating mark doesn't even do the Latvian's display in Liquid's dominant win over Natus Vincere justice. He hard-carried the North American side in the opening half that saw Liquid secure 14 rounds on the offense of Inferno with 10 multikills, five opening kills, and nearly 150 ADR, ruining NAVI's day time and time again in banana.
Read more YEKINDAR bullies NAVI as Liquid move to 2-0 pool in Paris Highlights of the day
HLTV coverage
HLTV photographers Josip "brcho" Brtan and Rados?aw "MAKKU" Makuch captured day one of Legends Stage action in photos, which you can find in the gallery below:
Legends Stage day 1 photo gallery
Our writers on the ground, Lucas "LucasAM" Aznar Miles, Danish "Nohte" Allana, and Harry "NER0" Richards conducted the following interviews during the day:
Read more rigoN: "It's our third Major, we want to go to this arena" 
Read more YEKINDAR: "We always believed in ourselves, even when we started 0-2" 
Read more TeSeS: "We were one of the teams that chose to not bootcamp because of the travel schedule" 
Monte #22 Viktor 'sdy' OrudzhevVolodymyr 'Woro2k' VeletniukSergiy 'DemQQ' Demchenko
Mohammad 'BOROS' Malhas
Szymon 'kRaSnaL' Mrozek Sergey 'lmbt' Bezhanov 
HEROIC #1 Casper 'cadiaN' M?llerMartin 'stavn' LundRené 'TeSeS' MadsenRasmus 'sjuush' BeckJakob 'jabbi' Nygaard 
Richard 'Xizt' Landstr?m 
GamerLegion #31 Frederik 'acoR' Gyldstrand
Mihai 'iM' Ivan
Nicolas 'Keoz' DgusKamil 'siuhy' SzkaradekIsak 'isak' Fahlén 
Ashley 'ash' Battye 
Nick 'nitr0' Cannella 
Age: 27 Team: Liquid Rating 1.0: 0.98 Maps played: 1532 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.66 
Cai 'CYPHER' Watson 
Age: 20 Team: Into the Breach Rating 1.0: 0.99 Maps played: 492 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.71 
G2 #4 
Nikola 'NiKo' Kova?Nemanja 'huNter-' Kova?
Justin 'jks' SavageRasmus 'HooXi' Nielsen
Ilya 'm0NESY' Osipov 
Jan 'Swani' Müller 
9INE #17 Wiktor 'mynio' KrukKrzysztof 'Goofy' GórskiOlek 'hades' MiskiewiczKamil 'KEi' PietkunKacper 'Kylar' Walukiewicz Piotr 'nawrot' Nawrocki 
Bad News Eagles #20 
Rigon 'rigoN' GashiSener 'SENER1' MahmutiFlatron 'juanflatroo' HalimiDionis 'sinnopsyy' BudeciGenc 'gxx-' Kolgeci Jonatan 'Devilwalk' Lundberg fnatic #15 Freddy 'KRIMZ' Johansson
Dion 'FASHR' DerksenNico 'nicoodoz' TamjidiFredrik 'roeJ' J?rgensenWilliam 'mezii' Merriman Jamie 'keita' Hall FaZe #5 Finn 'karrigan' Andersen
H?vard 'rain' Nygaard
Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Helvijs 'broky' Saukants Robert 'RobbaN' Dahlstr?m 
Ninjas in Pyjamas #14 Kristian 'k0nfig' WieneckeFredrik 'REZ' Sterner
Aleksi 'Aleksib' VirolainenLudvig 'Brollan' BrolinDaniil 'headtr1ck' Valitov Daniel 'djL' Narancic Mareks 'YEKINDAR' Ga?inskis 
Age: 23 Team: Liquid Rating 1.0: 1.07 Maps played: 1236 KPR: 0.74 DPR: 0.70 
Guy 'NertZ' Iluz 
Age: 23 Team: ENCE Rating 1.0: 1.11 Maps played: 371 KPR: 0.77 DPR: 0.69 Into the Breach #27 Karol 'rallen' RodowiczJoey 'CRUC1AL' SteuselThomas 'Thomas' UttingCai 'CYPHER' WatsonSebastian 'volt' Malo? 
Gustavo 'Juve' Alexandre Liquid #7 Nick 'nitr0' CannellaKeith 'NAF' MarkovicJonathan 'EliGE' JablonowskiJosh 'oSee' OhmMareks 'YEKINDAR' Ga?inskis Damian 'daps' Steele Sener 'SENER1' Mahmuti 
Age: 26 Team: Bad News Eagles Rating 1.0: 0.91 Maps played: 535 KPR: 0.60 DPR: 0.66 
Vitality #2 Dan 'apEX' MadesclairePeter 'dupreeh' RasmussenEmil 'Magisk' ReifMathieu 'ZywOo' HerbautLotan 'Spinx' Giladi Danny 'zonic' S?rensen 
FURIA #8 Andrei 'arT' PiovezanYuri 'yuurih' SantosKaike 'KSCERATO' CeratoRafael 'saffee' CostaAndré 'drop' Abreu Nicholas 'guerri' Nogueira Lotan 'Spinx' Giladi 
Age: 22 Team: Vitality Rating 1.0: 1.09 Maps played: 564 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.64 Natus Vincere #3 Oleksandr 's1mple' KostylievDenis 'electroNic' SharipovIlya 'Perfecto' ZalutskiyValeriy 'b1t' VakhovskiyAndrii 'npl' Kukharskyi Andrey 'B1ad3' Gorodenskiy Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut 
Age: 22 Team: Vitality Rating 1.0: 1.27 Maps played: 1147 KPR: 0.84 DPR: 0.61 
Joakim 'jkaem' Myrbostad 
Age: 29 Team: Apeks Rating 1.0: 1.04 Maps played: 1524 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.70 Apeks #24 
Martin 'STYKO' StykJoakim 'jkaem' MyrbostadTim 'nawwk' Jonasson
Justinas 'jL' Lekavicius
Damjan 'kyxsan' Stoilkovski Jakub 'kuben' Gurczyński Viktor 'sdy' Orudzhev 
Age: 26 Team: Monte Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 1338 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.63 Joey 'CRUC1AL' Steusel 
Age: 26 Team: Into the Breach Rating 1.0: 1.07 Maps played: 1601 KPR: 0.72 DPR: 0.64 ENCE #9 Marco 'Snappi' PfeifferGuy 'NertZ' Iluz
Pavle 'Maden' Bo?kovi?Pawe? 'dycha' Dycha
álvaro 'SunPayus' García Eetu 'sAw' Saha