Fans that stayed up for day two of the Kuala Lumpur Dota 2 Major playoffs were treated to a big upset.
In the first series of the night, Peter “ppd” Dager captained Ninjas In Pyjamas to victory over his former team, Evil Geniuses. The newly formed European squad bested the North American elites 2-1 to advance in the upper bracket.
For a time, it seemed as though the series was going to go in EG’s favor.
In game one, EG cores Syed “SumaiL” Hassan and Artour “Arteezy” Babaev utterly dominated NiP, snowballing off an early gold lead and securing the EG win in under 30 minutes. NiP fired back hard in game two however, taking a similarly decisive win on the heels of a strong showing by mid player Adrian “Fata” Trinks.
That led to the decisive game three, which was easily the most competitive game of the heated series. Though NiP jumped off to an early lead in kills, EG was able to keep things fairly close in terms of both gold and experience. Unfortunately for EG fans, the boys in blue never managed to punish NiP’s constant aggression around the map. The kills kept coming and for NiP, enabling PPD and his team to seal up the game and the series win.
This victory over EG easily stands as the biggest of NiP’s season thus far, which has seen the squad perform well against regional competition in Europe while struggling against the world’s very best. NiP is now guaranteed at least a top-six finish and will face next face Virtus.pro for a spot in the upper bracket finals.
EG remains in the hunt in Kuala Lumpur, but will have to walk a tightrope in the lower bracket. The team will be welcomed there by NA rivals Forward Gaming in a best-of-three elimination series.
