Day two of DreamLeague Season 8 Major begun with Virtus.pro going up against Evil Geniuses in the first of three elimination games of the day.
While they were sitting quite far above everyone in the Dota 2 Pro Circuit Point rankings, Virtus.pro were dropped into the lower bracket of DreamLeague Season 8 Major and faced elimination from a tournament where they would want to pull even further ahead before the year ended. However, their opponents, Evil Geniuses were battling to find any proper form lately and needed to find their way into the top 4 of the event to claim some much needed Pro Circuit Points.
Game One
VP saw the perfect start to the game, easily finding the farm on their cores and opening up a 1-6 lead on the score board within the first 10 minutes. With constant rotations and the ease of tower taking offered by Alexei ‘Solo’ Berezin’s Shadow Shaman’s Serpent Wards and Vladimir ‘No[O]ne’ Minenko’s Exorcism on the Death Prophet, VP pushed themselves into an early 5k lead on the net worth graphs. Before 20 minutes had passed, EG had already lost all tier 1 and tier 2 towers on their side of the map.
While EG had begun to make their way back into the game for a short amount of time, a superb fight from VP saw the Radiant high ground get breached, a tier 3 being dropped followed by an aegis being claimed by the Russian squad. But EG were not about to give up, even as VP meticulously picked apart their high ground, the North American team found continuous high value pick offs to keep themselves with a window into the game.
Suddenly EG found their way into the game, taking a great fight around the Roshan pit and VP seemed to be on the back foot, trying to quell the pressure from their opponent’s. With Saahil ‘Universe’ Arora on the Batrider making some amazing plays, the Radiant took control of the game with just over 40 minutes passed – but the game was not over just yet. After getting completely wiped by EG, VP had to burn through many buybacks to keep themselves in the game – which did work in their favor as they managed to then claim an aegis followed by the top lane barracks.
Both teams were constantly throwing everything they had at each other, not wanting to concede the first loss of the day and hoping to claim a foothold for a chance to stay in the tournament. With just over an hour gone in the game, EG claimed mega creeps and after rolling through the VP cores again, GG was called by VP, giving the North American squad an absolutely amazing game one win in the best-of-three series.
Game Two
This game began a lot slower than the previous and the early game saw both teams drawing equal for a few minutes. But from the time which EG grabbed an early aegis – 12 minutes in – they secured a fairly solid lead and the next 10 minutes saw the game moving further and further in their favor. VP seemed to have lost complete control of the game, as EG continuously ran over them, finding kills around the map. With just over 30 minutes passed in the game, EG were looking set to secure their spot in the next round of the lower bracket as they took a team fight which resulted in 4 from VP’s line up hitting the deck.
With an Aegis, the Cheese, and the Refresher Shard now in EG’s hands, they looked to go for the base breaking push. The only hope for VP was No[O]ne on the split pushing Tinker. But after EG managed to kill the Tinker off twice in quick succession, VP had no way to defend their base and had to tap out.
With that, EG claimed a 2-0 win over the Russian team, Virtus.pro, knocking them out of the DreamLeague Season 8 Major. Evil Geniuses, with a stunning display, will move forward to face the winner of the next match up between Na’Vi and Newbee.
