Group B: Russia, Kyrgyzstan advance

Following the decision by Portugal's national team (who themselves were a replacement for the Chinese national team) to drop out of The World Championships 2015, a $100,000 national team event in Belgrade, Serbia, Group B of TWC 2015 was left with three teams.

E-frag.net, the event organisers, settled instead for a three-team group that would play solely in a best-of-three format, with the top two teams advancing to the playoffs.

Russia seized Group B by force

The first match of the group saw Asian region qualifiers Kyrgyzstan take on the sole African team at the event, Tunisia. Both matches were fairly close, but a dominant performance by Kyrgyzstan's Dias "⁠DiE⁠" Baibulatov took down Bahaeddine "⁠Attiaz⁠" Attia's men (16-14 on de_mirage, 16-10 on de_dust2).

Tunisia re-entered the arena, this time versus Russia, and the men of the Maghreb were this time no match for Denis "⁠seized⁠" Kostin, Georgi "⁠WorldEdit⁠" Yaskin, and others of the Federation, with Russia sealing both maps in dominant fashion (16-3 on de_inferno, 16-4 on de_overpass). 

With Kyrgyzstan and Russia therefore automatically assured entry into the playoffs, the two former Soviet Union nations played a best-of-three to determine who would top the group.

Following a 12-3 dominant half on de_cbble, Russia nearly allowed Kyrgyzstan to make a comeback on the first map with the latter team gaining back rounds before Russia finally took the map 16-10. The second map was a whitewash with the Russian team propelling forward to a 16-2 victory and thus topping Group B.

Group A is still to finish and see its second team move forward after Germany with Sweden duking it out with Indonesia for the final spot.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter