As the DreamLeague Season 11 Major rolls on, two more major upsets shook the upper bracket of the tournament to ensure that there will be a different top three for the first time in this Dota Pro Circuit season.
Evil Geniuses were the first to fall as they faced Keen Gaming, a team that’s looked ready to challenge anyone in the Major.
Keen lost 2-0 against Team Secret in the group stage, but they claimed a spot in the playoffs by beating J Storm and Team Liquid rather handily. It all led to them facing off against the third-ranked DPC team in the opening round of the upper bracket.
The Chinese team got blitzed by EG’s well-oiled offense in game one, essentially getting swept from the board in 20 minutes. That would typically indicate a lack of preparation on Keen’s part, but the next two games proved that theory wrong.
Keen went on to challenge EG in a 50-minute brawl that saw the Chinese club pulling out a close win in the final 15 minutes to tie things up. In the deciding game, Keen came out and hard-countered EG’s strategy that focused around SumaiL Hassan.
With Keen moving on, the last top team that still had to play was Virtus Pro, who were taking on Fnatic, the top squad out of Southeast Asia.
From the start, VP didn’t look quite as powerful as they had once been, continuing a trend of shaky play from the last two events. Fnatic took full advantage of their weakness and jumped out to a 1-0 lead.
Game two was much closer than the numbers showed as Fnatic held a large advantage through the early game. VP came on late, battling back against a dominant performance by Daryl Koh “iceiceice” Pei Xiang’s Timbersaw.
It wasn’t enough to change the outcome, though, as Fnatic pushed late for a four-kill swing. That 2-0 win guaranteed Fnatic a top six placing at the Major.
With both VP and EG in the lower bracket, some new blood will likely get the top cut of the DPC points from this event.
Published: Mar 17, 2019 04:58 pm