A rough day at The International 11

The International 11 continued today with multiple unfortunate incidents surrounding the event. But besides bugs and forfeits, the first team has officially secured a slot in the upper brackets of the playoffs. Without further ado, here are the latest news surrounding the Dota 2 Championship. 

The forfeit

During the faceoff between PSG.LGD and RNG, RNG suffered medical issues induced by COVID-19 that caused them to forfeit their second game against PSG.LGD. RNG released an official statement stating that most of its team members had tested positive for COVID-19, with the exception of the team’s support player Yap “xNova” Jian Wei. The team’s midlaner Lu “Somnus” Yao was hospitalized but he confirmed he is better now and will be playing from isolation.

Due to this incident, PSG.LGD secured a clean 2-0 victory in this series. However, the team has been having its own covid-induced issues, as PSG.LGD’s manager tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday but has failed to report this to the tournament organizers on time. That’s why Valve decided to punish PSG.LGD, who had to play the series against RNG with a loss of selection priority (meaning they can’t choose which side they want to play i.e Radiant or Dire).

Despite both teams having multiple issues of their own, both teams were initially looking to secure an upper-bracket spot for the playoffs. The only team that managed to do that so far is EG.

The bug

The much-anticipated match between Team Liquid and OG was put on hold for two hours during the first game of the series. Everything seems to be going well for OG, as they were ahead of Team Liquid with a 14K gold lead and 17 kills lead. However, in the 25th minute, OG’s hard support player Mikhail “Misha” Agatov suddenly disconnected from the game. Using in-game chat, his teammate Tommy “Taiga” Le explained that a bug caused Misha to disconnect and there is no reconnect option available for Misha to get back into the game. Artem “Yuragi “Golubiev followed up with a joke that OG can continue to play as 4 vs. 5. However, this particular joke came back to haunt him.

After two hours, a tournament admin found a way to enable Misha to reconnect to the game, and the match resumed. The pause seemingly threw OG off their game as Liquid slowly crawled back into the game to win the game 2-0.

 

Evil Geniuses become the first team to secure TI11 upper bracket slot

After their dominating 2-0 victory against RNG today, Evil Geniuses have garnered enough points to secure an upper bracket slot at The International 2022. Even though the team previously struggled to perform during LAN events and put on an average performance throughout the season, now it seems they finally found their form. With the return of their former captain Tal “Fly” Aizik to the team, they tore down most of the teams they met in the group stage.

Currently, Evil Geniuses are the leaders of Group A with a score of 14 W – 2L over their 8 series, with only Team Liquid being able to take the series against them.

Header: Valve Corporation