Outsiders roster disqualified from the tournament
The Virtus.pro (Outsiders) roster was disqualified before their match against BetBoom Team in the upper bracket semifinals. This means that Mind Games will receive a retroactive forfeit win for their match earlier today and all future Outsiders would have played are forfeit as well.
This happened because Pure, one of Outsiders players, drew a “Z” during game 1 of their series against Mind Games. This is a very sensitive topic as it’s related to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and two of the Mind Game’s players are Ukrainian. The Z symbol is a hate symbol in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s also being used as an identifier by the Russian military on its vehicles coming directly from Russia into Ukraine.
This puts the Virtus.pro organization and players in a very bad light considering their recent sanction from ESL due to their tight connections with the Russian government. We still don’t know all of the repercussions that Pure’s actions will bring to the team but it’s safe to say that they won’t get out of this easily. Pure’s professional Dota career may come to an end due to his actions.
BTS happened to act quickly and issued the disqualification on the same day. BTS also stated that they’ll be sharing an update soon regarding the situation. It’s sad to see this happen as Valve and BTS came up with this tournament as a solution to the delay that DPC EEU recently suffered due to Ukraine’s stiuation.
Results of the first round in the lower bracket
Before all the situation regarding Outsiders disqualification unfolded, two series would go underway. Team Spirit, the TI10 champions that got defeated by the last seed of the tournament would have to face HellRaisers. Team Spirit didn’t give a chance to HR as they came off the gates striking hard. The first game was a demonstration of Team Spirit’s dominance, the one we all were expecting from the very beginning of the tournament. The first game of the series was controlled by TS from the get-go and they were able to close it out before the 31-minute mark.
During the second game of the series, we saw Team Spirit repeat their dominant performance against HellRaiser. Not much was happening during the first few minutes of the game until Team Spirit decided to push the pedal to the metal. Around the 16-minute mark, Team Spirit had an almost perfect fight where every single member of HellRaisers died, and they couldn’t recover from that.
The other encounter we had was CIS Rejects vs PuckChamp. The Rejects came into this series after being defeated by Outsiders in the first round of the tournament. CIS Rejects managed to secure the first game as they took down PuckChamp in a 46-minute match.
The rejects were looking to get a clean sweep this series but Krylat had other plans in mind. The PuckChamp player had an amazing performance as he and his 15 KDA score proves this. The third match was a complete mess, once again we had a game that lasted over an hour, the first one was PuckChamp vs Mind Games third game, which had a duration of 86 minutes and 28 seconds. After a lot of back-and-forth moments, the Rejects were able to come out on top and finish the series 2-1.
We still have more action to see in this tournament as Na’Vi is facing CIS Rejects for a chance at facing Team Spirit and advancing into the lower bracket final. In the upper bracket finals we have BetBoom Team vs Mind Games and whoever wins this series will get a spot in the ESL One Stockholm Major. Be sure to come back as we’ll be covering the results of the upcoming matches.
