After an undefeated opening day, Evil Geniuses continued their strong showing by topping their group and moving on to the playoffs at ESL One Birmingham.
Downing both Gambit Esports and Team Secret to start the event, EG went into their day two matchup against Keen Gaming with a lot of momentum. Keen has also not been the strongest team in recent months, so their weaknesses were well-known going up against EG.
Despite this, EG had some issues during game one, with Keen uprooting several pushes. But, as expected, it wasn’t enough to stop the eventual build up to a late-game rush by EG’s high-powered offense.
That spiraled into a 2-0 win for the North American squad. The same style of play repeated itself in their next series against Alliance, with the Europeans holding EG down early but failing to capitalize on any advantage as EG improved to 8-0 in groups.
Having already secured the top seed in Group B, EG looked extremely lax, which resulted in LGD Gaming trouncing them in the final series of the group stage.
Game one took about 26 minutes and saw EG reeling almost the entire game. Things settled down in game two, with both sides probing for an opening and playing more conservative until EG tried to pull off an offensive maneuver, which LGD punished and used as a launch pad to victory.
After LGD derailed their train of momentum, EG faced TNC Predator in the first round of the playoffs. They relied on a Shadow Fiend and Puck, but they were still no match against TNC, who took game one. EG managed to bounce back in the next two matches, though, in drawn-out affairs. In both games, EG played sloppily at times when dealing with some of the TNC player’s ranged options.
With a 2-1 victory under their belt, EG now sits in the upper bracket finals, set for a rematch against LGD to see who gets the first spot in grand finals. That match begins June 1 at 9:50am CT on ESL’s Dota Twitch channel.
