Evil Geniuses is positioned to win its first live tournament in well over a year at ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational Singapore.
The popular squad has taken a spot in the grand finals by defeating Gambit Esports. The team now gets a day off and waits to see how the lower bracket of the event plays out.
Evil Geniuses has been very strong throughout ONE Esports Singapore. The team topped its group and took a spot in the upper bracket with a 9-1 record, sweeping the likes of Vici Gaming and Team Liquid.
The playoffs kicked off with a series against Team Secret, which EG won in emphatic fashion thanks to a pair of great performances from carry Artour “Arteezy” Babaev. This set EG up with a spot in the upper bracket finals, where they were greeted by Gambit Esports. Though Gambit is a very formidable team right now, Evil Geniuses had no trouble defeating them.
The first game started with EG brutalizing Gambit mid Danil “gpk” Skutin, killing him three times in the first five minutes of the game. gpk never recovered from that disastrous start, falling far behind in levels and positioning to Abed “Abed” Azel L. Yusop, allowed Abed to have a strong mid game. Gambit’s draft scaled better into the late game, but Evil Geniuses didn’t give them the chance to leverage that, resulting in a quick 23-minute victory.
It was a rough loss for Gambit that ended with a lopsided 19-4 scoreline, and things would get much worse in game two.
Abed once again crushed the mid lane using Shadow Fiend, jumping out to a significant gold lead. He began roaming after 10 minutes, finding kills and pushing towers around the map. Once again, Evil Geniuses closed things out as quickly as possible with another win in 23 minutes. The kill differential here was even worse as Evil Geniuses scored 32 kills to Gambit’s six.
Gambit Esports was brutalized by EG, but they’re still alive in the tournament. They are currently in the lower bracket and are awaiting one of four teams to meet them.
The next games set to be played at ONE Esports Singapore are Alliance vs. Virtus.pro and Team Secret vs. Vici Gaming. The last team standing among that lot will face Gambit for the opportunity to compete in the grand finals.
Regardless of the outcome, ONE Esports Singapore has been a huge win for Gambit. The team had a strong start to the season but a last-place finish at the MDL Chengdu Major and failure to outright qualify for the DreamLeague Season 13 major undercut some of their achievements.
Like EG, Gambit looked very strong in the group stage and started the playoffs with a 2-0 win of Alliance. They still have a chance to win it all and will likely be hungry when they return to action this weekend.
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