The group stage of FISSURE Playground 3 in Suzhou produced its biggest shock yet on Thursday. 5star, a Mongolian side ranked 127th in the world, eliminated Astralis 2-1 to follow up their win over compatriots The MongolZ, while Legacy and BETBOOM won their group upper-bracket finals to skip the quarter-finals entirely. It has been a brutal week for the established names in Counter-Strike, and the $1,000,000 event is now guaranteed a playoff bracket that few would have predicted.
5star turn one upset into two
When 5star beat The MongolZ on day two, most observers filed it under one-off. Astralis, the world number 12, were expected to restore order. Instead, the Mongolians raced to a 9-3 start on Inferno behind 29-year-old hoolig4n and closed the map 13-10. Astralis answered on Ancient, where a four-kill pistol round from Staehr set up a comfortable 13-5, and the decider on Cache looked to be following the script when the Danes went up 11-9.
That is where the series flipped. clouden won a second 1v1 of the map in round 21, 5star broke Astralis’ economy the following round, and with the Europeans holding a 4v2 advantage in a round that would have put them at match point, ariucle and NEUZ pieced together a clutch that sent Astralis home in 9th-12th place. On the stat sheet Astralis actually out-fragged their opponents, with ryu (1.28) and Staehr (1.27) leading all players, which only underlines how much the final map came down to a handful of decisive duels.
Legacy beat FURIA in the Brazilian derby, BETBOOM deny MIBR
In the Group A upper-bracket final, Legacy dispatched FURIA 2-0 on Mirage and Ancient. Both maps were level at 6-6 after the first half, but the arT-led team dominated the T side on FURIA’s Mirage pick and the CT side of Ancient, winning 13-7 and 13-9 without letting FURIA reach double digits. latto (1.34) and n1ssim (1.30) topped the ratings, while FalleN and molodoy struggled badly at 0.61 and 0.66.
Group B went to BETBOOM, who stopped MIBR from making it two Brazilian-core teams in the semi-finals. MIBR led 7-5 at half-time on their own Mirage pick but won only two rounds after the switch, losing 13-9. On Anubis they were 8-4 up at the break, yet BETBOOM dragged the map to overtime and took it 16-14. d1Ledez (1.31) and Magnojez (1.25, with 96.9 ADR) carried the Russian side, whose reward is a direct ticket to the semi-finals alongside Legacy.
PARIVISION, 9z and TYLOO also out
Elsewhere, magic eliminated PARIVISION 2-0 with 13-11 and 16-14 wins, the second map coming after PARIVISION had led 12-6 in regulation and 14-12 in overtime. The result carried extra weight for magic’s AW, who was benched by PARIVISION at the end of 2025. 9z and TYLOO also exited in the lower bracket earlier in the day. FaZe and The MongolZ had already gone out in last place on Wednesday.
What is left to decide
Two playoff places remain, and both come from the lower-bracket finals later on Thursday: Alliance face magic, while G2 take on 5star. That last match is the one everyone will be watching. G2 lost to Astralis on day one and are fighting for survival, while 5star are looking for a third top-15 scalp in three days. For bookmakers pricing the match, the temptation is to treat 5star as a heavy underdog again, but the clutch-heavy way they have won their two series makes this one far harder to call than the rankings suggest.
The bracket is already set at the top: Legacy in one semi-final, BETBOOM in the other, with MIBR and FURIA waiting in the quarter-finals on opposite sides. Half of the top six will have Brazilian cores. Anyone looking to back a run through the bracket can compare welcome bonuses across the major esports sites before the quarter-finals begin.
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