The Update: May 27

By: Zachary Lange

Here is The Update for May 27:

Samsora wins doubles, places fourth in singles at MomoCon 2019

It was a successful weekend for Ezra “Samsora” Morris at MomoCon 2019, as the Peach main took home the doubles trophy and placed fourth in the singles bracket in Smash: Ultimate play.

The tournament, held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, featured 140 doubles pairings and a whopping 1250 players entered the singles event. With over 1,200 participants, MomoCon was categorized as an S tier tournament by the official Panda Global Rankings system.

Play in doubles alongside Snake main Ally began with six consecutive set victories until a loss in the winners bracket semifinals. Bouncing back in the losers bracket, the pairing won three straight sets to find themselves in the grand finals needing a reset against the winners bracket foes MKLeo and Marss.

Their cooperation paid off and resulted in winning two straight sets to claim a first place victory.

In singles, ironically, he would end up losing to each member of the duo that he helped defeat in Saturday’s doubles finals.

Samsora breezed through seven consecutive opponents until he ran up against MKLeo again in the deciding match to qualify for the top-8 winners bracket. Despite a tightly contested set, Samsora lost 3-1, qualifying instead for the top-8 losers bracket after a sweep over R.O.B. player WaDi to secure a spot into Sunday’s finals.

The signature head bobs came out in full strength Sunday as the Peach smasher rallied off a pair of impressive victories against Sinji and VoiD before bowing out of the competition in a 3-0 loss to Marss.

There’s no break for Samsora this weekend, as he’ll travel to Wisconsin for Splash’N’Smash 5.

PUBG qualify for finals of NPL Royale, finish 14th

In a midseason break from action in Phase 2 of the NPL; eUnited managed to qualify for Sunday’s finals in the $80,000 NPL Royale, but sputtered their way to a 14th place finish, respectively.

The NPL Royale is a non-points paying weekend event inside the OGN Super Arena in Manhattan Beach, California that combines all 32 teams across the NPL and NPL Contenders divisions.

Needing an 8th place finish or better in Saturday’s preliminary group stage of four games, eUnited scored a second place finish in Game 3 and racked up 22 kills to move on in fourth place overall.

Sunday’s main event posed a challenge for the team, highlighted by another second place finish in the final game of the seven-game finals. By then, time had run out to climb in the standings.

Team EnVy would wind up winning the NPL Royale. Next up for the squad is continued regular season action in the NPL where the team sits in 9th place.

Counter Strike fail to qualify for ESL Season 9 Finals

It was a challenging week for eUnited’s Counter Strike team at the ESL Studios in Burbank, California as a pair of close results that didn’t swing in favor of the team resulted in a 1-2 record in the last chance qualifier for the ESL Season 9 Finals.

The squad encountered a set back before play even began as Kaleb “moose” Jayne was unable to attend the event due to visa issues. Ian “motm” Hardy served as a stand-in, and rightfully held his own, against North American contenders Cloud 9 and Ghost Gaming as well as South American challengers Infinity.

What looked like a promising start to Tuesday’s set against Cloud 9 quickly unraveled. eUnited found success on the opener Inferno winning 16-8, but lost subsequent maps in Nuke (16-14) and Dust2 (16-7) to drop the series.

Wednesday’s best-of-three series against Ghost did see eUnited winning Dust2 (22-18) but dropping Mirage (16-9) and deciding map Inferno (16-11) to be mathematically eliminated from qualification into the finals.

More positively, the team bounced back in the Thursday finale to beat Infinity in a drubbing on Dust2 (16-0) and Nuke (16-11). eUnited also qualified for the next season of ESL play as a result of their opening group stage play back in April.

Next up for the team is the StarLadder Major closed qualifiers beginning June 12.