Two titans of Dota 2 face off in a flash flood of a series.
The International Dota 2 Tournament 2019 (TI9) is one of the biggest eSports events of the year, especially in terms of winnings handed out. This year’s prize pool broke last year’s $30 million record, passing just over $34 million. Since the first TI in 2010, the tournament has grown from a small Seattle, Washington event held on a college campus to a truly international eSports extravaganza held in Shanghai, China. The tournament ended earlier today, August 25, but there were some truly great matches leading to the Finals. Notable among them was Team Liquid’s face off with Evil Geniuses (EG).
Liquid and EG are both titans of the Dota 2 esports scene. Both teams have won previous TIs and both teams are made up of all star rosters. But while EG managed to secure a slot in the upper bracket of the tournament, Liquid stumbled in the group qualifying stages and found themselves in the lower bracket. At TI the bottom eight teams face best of one matches at the start of the main event and the top eight play best of threes. This meant that Liquid needed to win their first match on the biggest stage in eSports this year or be eliminated. EG, on the other hand had a bit of a buffer before they were knocked out of the competition.
Liquid won that important first game of their tournament. Then they won eight more without losing a single game. Going on a tear through the lower bracket is certainly not unheard of at TI, but going undefeated to do it is very rare. In contrast, EG dropped a game in every match they played at TI9.
Momentum is important in eSports just as it is in athletic sports. Coming into their match with EG, Liquid had the momentum, but in the early part of game that wasn't so apparent. After winning some early skirmishes, EG pulled ahead of Liquid but then at minute forty Liquid took out five EG heroes while losing only three of their own. Then two minutes later Liquid took out all five EG heroes while losing only one and a minute later the game was over for EG.
Game two of the series was something altogether different. Liquid led all thirty minutes and only gave up ten kills to EG. In most professional Dota 2 games the losing team concedes defeat by typing ‘GG’ in chat before the building in their base called the Ancient is destroyed which is the actual win condition of the game. By the end of game two in this series EG’s Ancient was destroyed and Liquid had only lost one of the four layers of defenses on their base.
As a reward for getting trounced by Liquid, EG will take away $1,167,493.