BOOM Esports and BetBoom Team were eliminated by Beastcoast in the earlier stages within the tournament, in an incredible coincidence Gaimin Gladiators’ player Miroslav “BOOM” Bican managed to beat them with a convincing two to zero scoreline.
While previous Invitational winners OG managed to come back from earlier defeats to eliminate the last Southeast Asian team, Fnatic remains in a tie for eight place with BetBoom.
Beastcoast wasn’t the favorite coming into the playoffs. After a rather lackluster couple of performances in the lower bracket they managed to advance in the tournament by winning against Team Spirit. This series was shocking to the Dota2 community as Team Spirit was one of the favorites to win it all, as previous Invitational champions, expectations were pretty high for them.
Both BetBoom and Beastcoast are really aggressive and unpredictable teams, thanks to this they were able to upset bigger teams. Most of their games followed the same pattern, either you are quite ahead or you lose, in most scenarios a single teamfight might change the entire game. In this chaotic matchup Beastcoast was able to pull through thanks to Chris Luck and K1 Hector’s amazing game 3 performance.
Unfortunately for Beastcoast this volatile play style was not enough against Gaimin Gladiators, who were able to withstand the aggressive barrage. It was a convincing series for Gaimin Gladiators as it finished with a two to zero scoreline. Beastcoast fought valiantly, as in game two were almost able to clinch a game, however Gaimin Gladiators simply are playing the best Dota2 of their lives currently.
Next we had the lower bracket matchup between OG and Fnatic which was definitely longer as both teams played quite well against each other. Each team took one of the first two games in the series, making viewers’ eyes glued to the screen. In the deciding game, Fnatic started with the right foot creating leads early to hopefully snowball OG out of the game. OG as a veteran team was able to sustain the early advantage from Fnatic by making rotations to protect the next possible objective within the map, as OG was always first in the zone they were able to control vision and create pickups thus slowing the early game from Fnatic and winning the last game of the series.
OG is up against Thunder Awaken, looking to win and go against GG in the lower bracket semi finals. Both teams are looking to win in order to face either Tundra Esports or TSM on May 21st to secure a spot in the grand finals.
