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The two teams advance from the group stage at the expense of Evil Geniuses and Sprout.

DreamHack Open January is down to just four teams as the groups have been played out. In the decider match of group A, FunPlus Phoenix got revenge on Evil Geniuses, while Spirit took down Sprout to secure the second playoff spot from group B.

The two teams join BIG and Gambit in a single-elimination bracket, where semi-finals will be played out as BO3, with the $70,000 event featuring a BO5 grand final.

chrisJ's new team is in the playoffs

Group A started with FunPlus Phoenix suffering a narrow 2-0 loss to Evil Geniuses in the opening match, with the European side bouncing back against HellRaisers to set up a rematch in the decider of the group. In this game, Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong and co. were dominant, dropping just three rounds on Nuke (16-3) and showing up convincingly on Inferno (16-8).

Sprout and Spirit found themselves in the decider match after both beat FORZE and lost to Gambit. The CIS side managed to close out Nuke after some trouble (14-1 CT side, 16-12 final score), but failed to capitalize on five map points on Train, seeing Sprout take the map after double overtime.

Finally, Spirit finished the series on Dust2, albeit again looking unconvincing in the final stages of the map. The newcomer to the team Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov shined, posting a 1.40 rating for the series, with over 90 kills to his name.

The playoffs of DreamHack Open January starts on Saturday with the following matchups:

15:00 BIG vs. Spirit (BO3)
18:30 Gambit vs. FunPlus Phoenix (BO3)

HellRaisers #34 Nikolaj 'kalinka' RysakovVadim 'Flarich' KaretinGuy 'anarkez' TrachtmanDmitriy 'ProbLeM' MartinovNikita 'JIaYm' Panyushkin BIG #4 Johannes 'tabseN' WodarzTizian 'tiziaN' FeldbuschFlorian 'syrsoN' RischeIsmailcan 'XANTARES' DörtkardeşNils 'k1to' Gruhne Spirit #20 Leonid 'chopper' VishnyakovNikolay 'mir' BityukovViktor 'sdy' OrudzhevAbdul 'degster' GasanovBoris 'magixx' Vorobiev FunPlus Phoenix #17 Jesse 'zehN' LinjalaChris 'chrisJ' de JongMartin 'STYKO' StykPavle 'Maden' BoškovićAsger 'Farlig' Jensen Sprout #28 Timo 'Spiidi' RichterDenis 'denis' HowellMarko 'kressy' ĐorđevićJosef 'faveN' BaumannFritz 'slaxz-' Dietrich Evil Geniuses #14 Peter 'stanislaw' JarguzTarik 'tarik' CelikVincent 'Brehze' CayonteEthan 'Ethan' ArnoldTsvetelin 'CeRq' Dimitrov Gambit #13 Abay 'HObbit' KhassenovTimofey 'interz' YakushinSergey 'Ax1Le' RykhtorovDmitry 'sh1ro' SokolovVladislav 'nafany' Gorshkov Time is adjusted to your selected timezone FORZE #22 Almaz 'almazer' AsadullinEvgenii 'FL1T' LebedevBogdan 'xsepower' ChernikovAndrey 'Jerry' Mekhryakov Abdul 'degster' Gasanov Age: 19 Team: Spirit Rating 1.0: 1.20 Maps played: 436 KPR: 0.80 DPR: 0.61 Chris 'chrisJ' de Jong Age: 30 Team: FunPlus Phoenix Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 1700 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.66