Gfinity Winter Series: Favorites march on; RONIN's flow not sick
The first round of the Gfinity Winter Series has now wrapped up with the final Bo3 between Swole Patrol and Hyper having closed it out. The event hadn't even begun and two teams called it quits on their opponents. Rage and Impact couldn't take the heat so they got out of the kitchen against oNe and eUnited respectively who will now earn a free pass into the second round.
With the forfeits, that left day 1 to three games. Most Wanted took the rug out from underneath Enter with a swift 2-0, and Etherian managed the same score against the Main team Armada.
The wildcard game was left to Glockoma and Arial Arise, two more Main teams. Brendan "Bwills" Williams led the way against the roster changing Glockoma with 57 frags in 54 rounds. Joel "jcrueL" Cruel was subbing in for Glockoma's Mario "MARIO" Wakim for most of the second map until he was able to return, at which point, it was already too late. Arial Arise rose to the occasion.
Day 2 ended in much more heart attack inducing fashion with back-to-back 2-1 finishes, with both Bo3's managing to need two 30+ round maps. The first series to finish was RONIN versus ex-Iceberg. RONIN ended up losing narrowly 2-1, with the unfortunate circumstance of having to use their coach Kyle "flowsicK" Mendez in place of the departed Stephen "reltuC" Cutler.
The BlackOut versus Mostly Harmless had no such circumstance though, as BlackOut scraped by on a 2-1 victory. For much of the series it was Kevin "ongline" Ong doing the majority of leg work for Mostly Harmless, but it was Bryan "MAKKA" Drouillard who stole the show. On the brink of being dropped to the lower bracket, it was MAKKA who pushed a third map after being down 12-3 at the half point of Mirage.
The final day of the first Upper Bracket stage only featured one game, but that's not to say it wasn't exciting. In back-to-back overtime maps it was Swole Patrol that defeated the Josh "Daemos" Hayes-led Hyper Gaming 2-0.
The upper bracket now looks as such:
| Matchup | Date | Time |
(1)  eUnited vs (9) ex-Iceberg |
March 22nd | 9:00 PM EDT |
(4) Etherian vs (5)  oNe |
March 22nd | 9:00 PM EDT |
| (6) Most Wanted vs. (3) BlackOut |
March 22nd | 9:00 PM EDT |
| (10) Arial Arise vs. (2) Swole Patrol |
March 22nd | 9:00 PM EDT |
While the lower bracket will be:
| Matchup | Date | Time |
(7) Glockoma vs. (15)  Hyper |
March 29th | 9:00 PM EDT |
| (11) Enter vs. (14) Mostly Harmless |
March 29th | 9:00 PM EDT |
| (7) Rage vs. (13) Armada |
March 29th | 9:00 PM EDT |
| (8) RONIN vs. (16) Impact |
March 29th | 9:00 PM EDT |
As always, the scheduling of these matches is subject to change, especially as the ESEA MDL teams scramble to finish their regular season matches in that league.
