Champions Shanghai is finally upon us, with the opening match of the event staging a clash between a team competing at its fifth-straight Champions event in Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Rank #1 invy Adrian Jiggs Reyes Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov and one of EMEA's most storied organizations, Team Liquid Team Liquid Europe Rank #6 nAts Ayaz Akhmetshin GSR Ognjen Bondžić kamo Kamil Frąckowiak trexx Nikita Cherednichenko Kicks Kimmie Laasner , competing at its fourth-ever Champions.

As EMEA's second seed and Pacific's third seed, Liquid and PRX entered this match having met just twice before, once at Champions İstanbul and once at Masters Toronto last year. The series in Toronto was one for the ages, with two overtimes and a near-comeback from down 11-1, telling the tale on Lotus to decide the series.

The series was played out on Paper Rex's Ascent and Team Liquid's Haven, leaving Lotus as the decider map. Paper Rex banned out Abyss and Summit, two maps that were still a work in progress on the Pacific stage, while Liquid banned Sunset and Split. Paper Rex won Ascent 13-4, Team Liquid won Haven 13-7, and Paper Rex won Lotus 13-10.

Paper Rex took to Ascent with the same comp that it had on its last appearance, with something 's Yoru as the solo Duelist while d4v41 and Jinggg formed a double-Sentinel pairing on Chamber and Sage, respectively. On Liquid's side of the stage, the long-awaited debut of prospect GSR , who replaced purp0 ahead of Champs, was the one to watch.

On the historically defense-sided map, PRX was dominant to start on attack. A run of four straight rounds, fueled by first bloods from several different avenues, made for a cruise in the first half. A LohaN timeout did help Liquid claw back some momentum in the form of four rounds, but Paper Rex switched to defense up 8-4.

something has the first ace of Champions Shanghai.

Paper Rex continued to assert its dominance on defense, with sharp shooting from d4v41, whose 3-1 record on first exchanges in the half helped PRX close out an easy 13-4 win.

Liquid's pick of Haven brought forward one of the most outlandish Haven comps that have been played all year. With Harbor as the lone Controller, the Duelist pairing between GSR and kamo was Yoru and Raze, while nAts was on Killjoy. PRX fielded a more meta comp, with Yoru-Phoenix and f0rsakeN on Astra.

While PRX won its third pistol of the series to open Haven, the reasoning behind Liquid's unique comp started to show. With set plays and paired utility, like the Seize-Paint Shells as well as the Harbor High Tide used to split sites on retakes, Liquid managed to string together a strong defensive half, entering halftime up 7-5.

After getting up using a comp that might be considered more catered to defense, Liquid continued to show good theory behind its comp, winning its first pistol of the series en route to what ended up being a rather clean 13-7 win.

Just four of kamo's map-high 22 kills on Haven to end the map.

As noted before, the last time these two teams met, it was a three-map marathon that ended on Lotus. It was in that match that PRX got out to an 11-1 lead on defense, which ended with a 14-12 PRX victory.

Both teams used a Raze-Yoru double-Duelist pairing with Omen and Fade, with the only difference being Liquid's Cypher and PRX's Vyse. PRX started the map by shutting down Liquid's attack, even narrowly avoiding a force-buy to snowball some economy into an early 5-0 lead. From there, though, it all started to crumble a bit. A Liquid eco round took some wind out of the PRX sails, with two rounds seized off the back of some uncoordination from the Pacific powerhouse. An alecks timeout helped PRX seize back the momentum, entering halftime up 9-3.

Liquid picked up its second pistol of the series to start the second half, which was responded to by PRX shutting down the would-be bonus, but two different tech pauses over the next two rounds did halt some momentum for both sides. Paper Rex leaned on its ult cycle to put Liquid on the back foot, using back-to-back C site hits to reach match point up 12-8.

While some GSR heroics threatened a Liquid comeback, a heroic ace round from the ever-reliable d4v41 sealed the deal at 13-10.

d4v41 ends the series on his own terms.

While something was the man to beat across all three maps with 58 kills and a 1.38 rating, d4v41's efforts on Lotus could not be ignored, as he led all players with 25 kills on the map. In the losing effort, GSR had the best rating for Liquid with 1.06, while kamo's 49 kills were not enough.

Liquid will now await the losing team between G2 and TYLOO, while Paper Rex will take on the winner.

From the Press Room

GSR on making his debut: “Yeah, to be honest, like at first I was really nervous, then after the second map and we started to win some rounds I was like 'Okay yeah, I was made for this.' Ever since then, it's been really fun. I hear the crowd, it's so much fun, and I cannot wait to do it again.”

something on receiving a warning for shooting bodies: "I used everything on the first match, which is okay, I guess. For me, the most important match is the first one on the stage, especially when it comes to Champs, to get the momentum. I did everything that I can do to build this momentum by shooting bodies and having fun, and then I got a warning for it."

alecks on how the team made use of its break before Champions: "I think either way would've been fine. Either we come in super match fit and we have more footage of ourselves to go through. It was just like, comps in Pacific. Or we take a short break and try to reinvent ourselves, so it was option B, but it was good."

Up next

G2 Esports G2 Esports North America Rank #4 jawgemo Alexander Mor BABYBAY Andrej Francisty trent Trent Cairns valyn Jacob Batio leaf Nathan Orf will take to the stage for the second match of the day against TYLOO TYLOO China Rank #1 splash Moses Christophe Jonathan Scales Zhang Zhen (张震) Erv Shen Zhiwei slowly Kelun Sun (孙科伦) SiuFatBB Pong Gaa Hei (庞加曦) xihe Peng Wenbo (彭文博) , which will wrap up day one of action.

Champions Shanghai will continue with the following matches: