It has been a tough year for the Romanian but he finally managed to secure his first 2015 championship.
Although he was considered one of the best players in 2014 with four gold medals including the one from DreamHack Summer, Dima “Rdu” Radu was not in his best shape this year. Although he made it to three grand finals in 2015, they were exclusively in online invitationals and he finished second in all three, the gold medal ever elusive. Rdu’s career highlight in 2015 was winning the Archon Team League as part of the Nihilum trio but outside splitting the juicy $150,000 with his team mates, the Romanian saw little individual success.
Things picked up for Rdu at the recently concluded Insomnia Truesilver Championship. The $25,000 LAN event with half and half split between invites and qualifiers saw Rdu as part of the former, alongside names such as team mates Lifecoach and ThijsNL, C9’s Kolento, Na`Vi’s Xixo, TSM’s Trump and more. The group drawing placed Rdu in Group A together with rising talents SuperJJ and AKAWonder as well as local representative BoarControl and his rocky way to the championship began.
With SuperJJ crushing the opposition with a flawless 9-0, Group A ended with a three-way tie breaker, one that Rdu was able to win to secure a spot in the playoffs. Several more tough series followed and the G2 player had to survive two five-game brawls against Lifecoach and Australian underdog Visule to make it to the playoffs.
His opponent there was Anton “Legendaren” Danielsson. The Swede had taken his first LAN win not half a year ago at Summer Masters I and was looking forward to making it back in the spotlight in Birmingham.
The last hero standing format helped Rdu get a head start as his Paladin won two in a row against Legendaren’s Warlock and Rogue. The Swede got back on the scoreboard with his Druid finally defeating the light but Rdu’s own Warlock put an end to the series. A 4-1 for G2’s played and $10,000 wired to his bank account.
This marks Rdu’s first championship run in more than a year as he last triumphed at the Deck Wars Season 2 finals in September 2014.
