BOOM Esports are the champions of GAMERS GALAXY

GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series HatYai Thailand concluded on August 20 and unsurprisingly, the highest ranked SEA team in Dota Pro Circuit — BOOM Esports — won the competition.

While the Grand Final result reflected the situation on the Dota 2 scene in the region, everything else in the purely Southeast Asian Dota 2 tournament was quite an upset. Most of the top teams finished in the bottom half, with three of the top four finishers considered underdogs at the start of the race.

GAMERS GALAXY group stage recap

GAMERS GALAXY Invitational Thailand started with two groups of four teams and after the single round robin was played, the top two squads from each group advanced to the semifinals.

Group A was challenging for everyone and three of the four teams finished with an identical score: 2W – 1L. But because of the differentiation rules, Talon Esports got eliminated while BOOM Esports and Polaris Esports qualified for the playoffs. This was quite unfortunate and it’s likely that the fans would have loved to see the situation solved with a tiebreaker rather than stats-based rules. The group’s fourth team the Army Geniuses didn’t manage to win a single match.

In Group B, the situation was identical. Three teams finished with a record of 2W – 1L, while only two of them were allowed to advance. The winners were Execration and RSG, while the unfortunate third-placed team was SMG, the team of the famous former Team Secret player Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng.

The big disappointment in Group B was Fnatic. For a team that finished 12th in DPC and received a direct invite to The International 2022, exiting a competition of this level with a record of 0W – 3L is quite shocking. Even though the matches were best-of-one, the result is worrisome and should make Fnatic players train a lot harder for TI11. Otherwise, they’ll most likely exit the tournament early, as the competitive level at The International 2022 will be much higher than that of GAMERS GALAXY.

BOOM Esports

In the playoffs, BOOM defeated RSG after they lost the first map, while Polaris easily defeated Execration in two games that lasted just one hour in total.

The following Grand Final was much closer than one would have expected. BOOM were the number one team in the region and one of the top eight teams globally, while Polaris were complete outsiders without experience in top-tier events. But despite this fact, BOOM needed five games to win. On the positive side, they were always in the lead. The scores were 1-0, 2-1, and then 3-2.

One thing that made the Grand Final a bit boring was the adherence to the current meta. The same heroes that were picked match after match at the recent PGL Arlington Major got picked here as well. Right now, everyone is begging IceFrog for a massive patch, because the game feels stale.

Header: Galaxy Racer