Adrenaline Cyber League 2019 was held in Moscow on May 25-26. Just like in previous tournaments of the series, inky four team competed for the $ 100,000 prize pool. Owing to this, the entire ACL 2019 competition consisted of three matches: Two semi-finals and a grand finale match which was contested in the best-of-5 format. However, even in such a short time there was enough space for surprises.
Unexpected results
In the first match of the event, Team Spirit (ex-Old But Gold) and Evil Geniuses, met to begin their preparations for the EPICENTER Major. Nobody believed in the team from the CIS – neither the experts, nor the players themselves. Yet despite the odds, it was Spirit who reached the grand final.
The day before the match s4, who studied Team Spirit, told that the style of this composition was quite predictable. Ironically, immediately after the interview in Dota 2, patch 7.22 was released which dramatically changed the rules of the game.
The Spirit players caught the opponent off-guard with the almost unkillable Death Prophet with Aghanim’s Scepter. In the second game, EG tried to reply and picked Mars, but failed miserably. The hero couldn’t find its way into the game and was avoided by the teams until the end of the competition.
https://t.co/RghpmPyTHr are your Adrenaline Cyber League champions! Thank you to all of our supporters! #GOGOVP#ACL2019 pic.twitter.com/RZaI8Lck5o
— Virtus.pro (@virtuspro) May 26, 2019
Na’Vi loses to VP again!
In the second semi-final, NaVi took on Virtus.pro. Before that, the teams met each other four times, in the EPICENTER Major qualifiers, so they were well prepared for the battle: On the first map, VP surprised the opponent with a strategy built around Meepo and it worked perfectly for them. NaVi managed to win on the second map, but in the last game of the series they were completely outplayed by the Major winners.
Grand finale
The grand finale of the tournament ended quite quickly: Virtus.pro did not test new heroes and confidently beat Team Spirit. In the three games won, Vladimir “No[o]ne” Minenko died only three times. Neither the signature Chaos Knight pick from Ilya “Illidan” Pivtsayev, nor the buffed Death Prophet were able to defeat the No.1 team of CIS. VP casually won the third title of the season. ArsZeeqq admitted that he was thinking about goofing off by a Techies pick, but then decided to play the finale seriously.
If you were looking for information on tickets purchase for ACL 2019, you will be probably surprised to hear that only 50 people attended the event. So with VP taking home another trophy, we believe that they are in good shape for the EPICENTER. The side did show poor results in the Paris Major but it can be ignored, since before the the team was a force to be reckoned with. They have qualified for the TI9 and now their goal will be to finish at 1st spot in the DPC ranking. They will have to train hard since no one is familiar with the meta and it will be interesting to see prepare for the last tournament in the 7.22 patch.
