In our preview of ESL One Stockholm 2022 major, we talked about how Eastern Europe’s DPC Tour 2 had to be rescheduled due to the ongoing war conflict in Ukraine. During the week, BeyondTheSummit announced that they would be hosting a set of online qualifiers that would allow teams to earn a spot in the upcoming major. It features 6 teams from Division 1 of the previous tour, 2 teams from Division 2 of the previous tour and they would have to play a double-elimination bracket, followed by a third slot decider, and every single match is a best-of-3.
The matches in the first round are Team Spirit vs BetBoom Team, HellRaisers vs Natus Vincere, Outsiders vs CIS Rejects, and PuckChamp vs Mind Games. The first day of the playoffs was a very exciting one so let’s get to it.
Team Spirit vs BetBoom Team, the biggest upset in the DPC Tour 2 so far.
We have to start with the match that was a surprise for every single spectator out there. Team Spirit came into the tournament as the 1st seed, they also are the last The International winners. On the other hand, we have BetBoom team, the last seed of the event as they are a team that qualified from the second division. The series started unexpectedly in favor of BetBoom where they closed the first game in a chaotic manner after 55 minutes. It’s not that uncommon for the underdogs to win 1 game in a best-of-x series and in fact, Team Spirit managed to come out on top quite convincingly in the next game. The third game is where the unexpected happened and BetBoom once again took down Team Spirit with a completely different draft and playstyle and they secure a spot in the winners’ bracket semi-finals.
HellRaisers vs Natus Vincere, the Ukrainian team shows dominance.
This series didn’t have any crazy upsets or unexpected results, but Na’Vi still showed good games. The first game started quite slow and none of the teams had a clear advantage early on. Around the 20-minute mark Laise on Dragon Knight managed to pick up a couple of kills and this placed him in a comfortable position. After 10 minutes of very back-and-forth teamfights, Na’Vi managed to take down HellRaisers as Laise finished the match with a KDA of 32. The second game of the series was a lot more one-sided and Na’Vi simply rolled over the HellRaisers team, closing out the match exactly at the 28-minute mark. The result of this series means that Natus Vincere will face BetBoom Team in the next round and HellRaisers is going up against Team Spirit in the lower bracket.
Outsiders vs CIS Rejects, the close call for Outsiders.
In case you didn’t know Outsiders is the Virtus.pro team competing under a neutral alias due to the imposed sanctions by ESL on the Russian Organization. CIS Rejects are the 7th seed coming from the second division and feature the youngest player of the tournament in Depressed Kid, the 17-year-old mid laner. The series started in favor of the Rejects as they defeated Outsiders after a very exhausting and chaotic 52-minute game. The Outsiders had to make some draft adjustments for the rest of the series but they managed to win the next two games in a convincing fashion. Outsiders and CIS Rejects are now waiting for the result of the PuckChamp vs Mind Games series to know which team they’ll be playing next.
