After disappointing results on day one, both SINNERS and Fiend completed their recoveries today to claim the final spots available for the main event.

It was do-or-die time on the final day of the V4 Future Sports Festival Play-in, with only two spots for the main event left to play for. On the line was a chance to join teams like BIG and Gambit in the main draw, and the prospect of a slice of the impressive $326,360 prize pool.

The first series saw SINNERS taking on ONYX, and despite 62 places separating them in the HLTV world rankings, it was a tightly contested match.

The first map of the series was the ONYX pick of Inferno, a map that SINNERS themselves are proficient on. The Serbian side found themselves having to battle back from a poor start where they went 7-3 down, before a back and forth game ensued that ended with a narrow 16-14 victory for ONYX.

Newcomer to the squad Luc "⁠ArroW⁠" Oehmke further reinforced his claim to a permanent spot on the roster with a 1.46 rated performance topping the scoreboard for his side.

Next up was SINNERS pick, Vertigo, and this map ended up being a comfortable one for the Czech squad. They were simply too good for their counterparts ONYX, the difference in utility usage highlighting the gulf in class between the two teams on this particular map.

Jindřich "⁠ZEDKO⁠" Chyba was the standout man in a comfortable 16-8 victory, posting an impressive 113 ADR on his way to a 1.88 rating.

The decider of Nuke, much like the first map, went all the way, but with a different result. SINNERS scraped a 16-14 victory, largely due to the superlative performance of one Adam "⁠NEOFRAG⁠" Zouhar, who racked up 35 frags to carry his squad to victory. It may have been a more secure result had the Czech side not given up the first seven rounds of the map to the ONYX T side.

SINNERS	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Jindřich 'ZEDKO' ChybaZEDKO	73 - 52	+21	90.8	1.40
Adam 'NEOFRAG' ZouharNEOFRAG	66 - 57	+9	91.9	1.29
Tomáš 'oskar' Šťastnýoskar	57 - 41	+16	67.3	1.15
Sebastian 'beastik' Daňobeastik	42 - 61	-19	63.2	0.87
Max 'SHOCK' KvapilSHOCK	45 - 55	-10	53.7	0.86

ONYX	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Aleksa 'Impulse' StankićImpulse	69 - 47	+22	80.3	1.29
Luc 'ArroW' OehmkeArroW	57 - 58	-1	72.8	1.03
Dimitrije 'DiMKE' VeljkovićDiMKE	48 - 60	-12	69.7	0.92
David 'Dav' MiljanićDav	44 - 60	-16	64.3	0.86
Vladyslav 'bondik' Nechyporchukbondik	45 - 59	-14	68.9	0.84

The second series of the day featured Fiend taking on Budapest Five, and despite only going to two maps, this was still a close battle.

The Hungarian squad picked Nuke, however they didn’t quite manage to justify the pick. Five rounds on their T side was respectable, before they struggled on the start of their CT side and ended up falling to a 15-11 deficit.

They managed to recover and haul the map to overtime, but Fiend made the rounds chaotic and thrived in that chaos, taking overtime 4-2 and the map 19-17.

That took us to the Bulgarian’s pick of Inferno, and they made the pick count. Despite a heroic performance by Fodor "⁠fleav⁠" Levente as he attempted to drag his team to a decider, Fiend came out on top 16-13, largely due to edging the Hungarians in two key areas, going 15:14 in opening kills and 2:1 in clutches won.

This meant the home favourites were sent crashing out of the tournament before making it to the main event.

Fiend	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Hristiyan 'REDSTAR' PironkovREDSTAR	54 - 38	+16	79.6	1.22
Simeon 'dream3r' Ganevdream3r	50 - 36	+14	69.8	1.15
Georgi 'SHiPZ' GrigorovSHiPZ	39 - 53	-14	77.5	1.04
Kamen 'bubble' Kostadinovbubble	39 - 47	-8	75.2	0.96
Deyvid 'h4rn' Benchevh4rn	34 - 41	-7	65.6	0.90

Budapest Five	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Kornél 'kory' Szedlárkory	46 - 43	+3	88.6	1.24
Fodor 'fleav' Leventefleav	53 - 42	+11	82.2	1.15
Áron 'Aaron' HomokiAaron	42 - 46	-4	70.7	1.03
András 'coolio' Fercsákcoolio	45 - 41	+4	74.2	0.98
Patrik 'bodito' Bodabodito	29 - 45	-16	47.2	0.70

The end of the day brought with it the group draw for the main event, which gave us the following groups and matchups for day one:

Group A
10:00 Gambit vs. Fiend (BO1)
11:15 BIG vs. eSuba (BO1)

15:00 Group A elimination match (BO3)

Group B
12:30 Entropiq vs. SINNERS (BO1)
13:45 Movistar Riders vs. Enterprise (BO1)

18:30 Group B elimination match (BO3)