Shanghai will bleed blue this August
Image banner via DreamHack
Shanghai will be bleeding blue this August as Evil Geniuses secured their ticket to The International 2019, this year’s grand Dota 2 world championship.
After clinching a top-eight finish in the ongoing DreamLeague Season 11, the third Major tournament of the 2018-19 Dota Pro Circuit, EG was able to gather enough Dota Pro Circuit points to join Team Secret and Virtus.pro on the currently brief list of The International 2019 attendees.
The North American juggernaut’s deciding series against Peter “ppd” Dager’s Ninjas in Pyjamas in the lower bracket of The Stockholm Major accurately painted a picture of their desire to play for this year’s Aegis of Champions. They didn’t even dare to run eyebrow-raising shenanigans like how they let Syed Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan play mid as Underlord against Keen Gaming in the upper bracket—this time, EG played to dominate.
VOD via twitch.tv/dreamleague
In the entire best-of-three series, which only lasted for over an hour of game time, the boys in blue were always one, or maybe two steps ahead of NiP in every aspect of the game. They were able to keep their opponents at a total kill score of 15, while they amassed 63. In a head-to-head matchup, EG’s cores were objectively better against NiP’s. In both games, Arteezy died zero times, while dealing the highest amount of damage against enemies.
Even though their main mission for this season is practically over, EG, who debatably has the most third-place finish among all top-tier Dota 2 teams, is now left with the task of taking home a championship title and ultimately breaking their third-place curse. Fortunately for the Tal “fly” Aizik-led squad, The Stockholm Major may be the best tournament for them to fulfill this quest—they just have to overcome the underperforming Dota Pro Circuit leaders, and outplay the meteoric Chinese teams.
With four more days left for the DreamLeague Season 11, one more active participant is expected to secure a seed at The International 2019. Leading the race is last year’s second-placers, PSG-LGD, as well as the reigning Kings of Southeast Asia, Fnatic Dota.
The Dota 2 action at The Stockholm Major will resume tonight at 20:30 SGT with the elimination match between North America’s J.Storm and Team Secret.
