ESL One Thailand 2020: Asia – Upper Bracket Final Preview

ESL One Thailand 2020: Asia is an online Dota 2 tournament that’s scheduled to end on September 6^th. Only 4 more matches are left to be played and in this article, I will take a close look at two of them: the Upper Bracket Final and the 3^rd round of the Lower Bracket. But first, to give you some context, here’s what happened so far in the Group Stage and Playoffs Stage.

ESL One Thailand 2020: Asia Results

These are the results for the Group Stage of ESL One Thailand 2020: Asia.

Group A

• 1^st place: TNC Predator: 4 W – 1 L
• 2^nd place: Boom Esports: 4 W – 1 L
• 3^rd place: Motivate.Trust Gaming: 3 W – 2 L
• 4^th place: Fnatic: 3 W – 2 L
• 5^th place: Adroit Esports: 1 W – 4 L
• 6^th place: Team Trust: 0 W – 5 L

Group B

• 1^st place: Sparking Arrow Gaming: 4 W – 1 L
• 2^nd place: Neon Esports: 4 W – 1 L
• 3^rd place: Geek Fam: 3 W – 2 L
• 4^th place: T1: 3 W – 2 L
• 5^th place: Aster.Aries: 1 W – 4 L
• 6^th place: Question Mark: 0 W – 5 L

Playoffs

In the Playoffs Stage, TNC Predator started with a victory against Neon Esports while BOOM Esports defeated Sparking Arrow. This was the Upper Bracket R1. In the Lower Bracket, T1 defeated Motivate.Trust and Fnatic defeated Geek Fam. In the second round of the Lower Bracket, Neon Esports beat T1 and Fnatic beat Sparking Arrow. All of these 4 Lower Bracket matches ended with a score of 2 – 0. And that’s how we got to the two matches I’m about to analyze next.

Upper Bracket Final: TNC Predator vs. BOOM Esports

TNC Predator looks unstoppable. Its roster is made up of superstar players such as kpii, Tims, and Armel, who have a vast amount of experience at the highest competitive level. By contrast, this event doesn’t even come close in competitiveness. In addition to that, TNC has already defeated BOOM Esports in the Group Stage of ESL One Thailand 2020: Asia with a score of 2 – 0. BOOM didn’t do bad either, ending with 4 wins and just 1 loss. But the skill difference between them and their opponent is quite big. So I don’t expect an upset here. At most, the match will end with a score of 2 – 1 this time.

Lower Bracket R3: Neon Esports vs. Fnatic

After finishing the Group Stage in 4^th place with just 3 wins and 2 losses, Fnatic went on to beat both Geek Fam and Sparking Arrow without losing a single game. In this match against Neon Esports they definitely have a big advantage, simply because their players are much stronger than Neon’s. Most of them have multiple TI participations and top results at big tournaments, so I don’t see Neon triumphing here in spite of having obtained 4 wins and 1 loss in the Group Stage. Their group was much easier than Fnatic’s.

 

Photo credit: Valve