One kill is all it takes: BetBoom suffers devastating loss to Azure Ray at TI 2023

BetBoom Team proved that its “super team” roster was not a bust, completing a solid turnaround in the second half of the year but unfortunately falling short at The International 2023. After blowing up Azure Ray in game two, one poorly timed move cost Nightfall his Morphling and BetBoom their tournament life. 

After a thriller of a series against Virtus.pro on the opening day of TI12’s finals weekend, BetBoom entered their series against AR with a lot of confidence. That held up for the first 30 minutes of game one until AR took the second Roshan and turned BetBoom’s offensive push against them. 

It was still winnable for BetBoom heading into the closing minutes, but Somnus’ Necrophos absolutely dominated the last 10 minutes, walking into every fight as an unkillable target and leading AR out of the game-clinching skirmish. 

Facing elimination, BetBoom dropped drafted the first Dragon Knight of the entire tournament for gpk and dropped Pure on the Chaos Knight. With that pairing, BB killed Somnus’ Puck five times before the 20-minute mark and got several key picks in a 35-5 stomp to even up the series. 

Game three looked like it would be another extended fight, but Nightfall fumbled the bag for BetBoom with his Morphling, dying twice early, letting AR take an easy lead, and allowing Lou’s Luna to farm uncontested. 

That on its own wasn’t enough to open the doors for a game-ending push, but one additional mistake at the 38-minute mark led to Nightfall dying again. With no Morphling to threaten them, AR took their chance to group up, approach the high ground, and end the series. 

BetBoom didn’t get to walk away without an extra jab from AR either, as the Chinese team dropped a few question marks instead of the usual “gg’s” at the end of game three. This is a throwback to TORONTOTOKYO’s all-chat messages accusing AR of getting Pure disqualified before Somnus and co. eliminated them from the Bali Major. 

This is a disappointing end to the year for BetBoom who entered this season as arguably the favorite to dominate Eastern Europe, but instead, bombed out of basically every big event until Riyadh Masters in July. 

“I hope we can win more tournaments next year since we didn’t win much this one,” Nightfall said. “Thanks [to] everyone who supported us. I kind of played badly [during] a lot of [game three,] maybe I could have carried it myself. That’s it.”