PGL Arlington Major semifinals preview

PGL Arlington Major is about to enter the third competitive day of the playoffs. A lot of strong teams, such as Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and Royal Never Give Up, have already been eliminated. The situation in Dota Pro Circuit’s rankings table is almost finalized and the next several days will determine who goes to TI11.

The semifinals of PGL Arlington will be interesting to watch not just because the matches are likely to be spectacular but also because they can show us what is likely to happen at The International 2022. All four teams are among the world’s best and constitute the big favorites for this year’s TI.

The results so far

In the first round of upper bracket matches, PSG.LGD defeated BOOM Esports, OG defeated Entity, Team Spirit defeated Outsiders, and Aster defeated Fnatic.

In the lower bracket, all of the three teams that lost in the upper bracket defeated their respective opponents. The last remaining lower bracket match for the first round is Fnatic versus beastcoast. The winner will be decided later today.

Semifinals predictions

In the first semifinals match of the upper bracket, PSG.LGD will play against OG. The two teams have already met twice in the last few weeks. The first time it happened at Riyadh Masters 2022 while the second time it happened in the group stage of PGL Arlington Major. Both times, PSG.LGD won.

However, the battles were not one-sided and OG has gotten better since then. This should give OG fans hope for the upcoming confrontation. The score is likely to be 2 – 1 but we don’t yet know in favor of who. What we do know is that the Chinese team looked unbeatable at this tournament and so far, they won 17 maps and only lost one.

In the second semifinal, Aster will play against Spirit. The two teams drew in the group stage and either one could win this battle. Spirit are the TI champions and their results so far have been excellent. The only team that managed to beat them was Evil Geniuses, but EG is out of the race.

Aster are the second-best team in China at the moment and that fact is indicated by their results in the DPC tours. But it probably won’t be enough against Spirit’s roster.

There were many moments in the group stage when Aster came close to losing against relatively weak teams like Natus Vincere and beastcoast. To win a best-of-three versus the Riyadh Masters finalists and the ongoing TI champions would be quite a feat.

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