Photo: Robert Paul / DreamHack
Keaton “Chakki” Gil of Team Dignitas took his first major championship against Terrence “TerrenceM” Miller last night.
Chakki has been chasing gold for almost a year and a half now. The first high tournament finish for the American came at the SCAN Inivitational way back in December 2014 and since then he’s been within reach of a championship on a number of occasions, but never quite getting it. Between SCAN Invitational and last night, Chakki holds four silver medals and four more semi final finishes, at major events like DreamHack Summer 2014 and Esports Arena Invitational.
DreamHack Austin, however, was the event that broke the curse of silver for the Dignitas player. Piloting a control heavy lineup headlined by his outstanding N’Zoth Paladin, Chakki exited the swiss round as the fifteenth seed, beating world champion Sebastian “Ostkaka” Engwall, Europe’s champion Ole “Naiman” Batyrbekov and Cloud9’s Drew “TidesofTime” Biessener along the way.
Left unbanned, Chakki’s N’Zoth Paladin went 6-1 in the playoffs, becoming one of the most terrifying decks of the tournament. His Control Warrior and Priest also performed well against the scary aggro decks such as Zoo and Aggro Shaman, while it was his spell-teched ZooLock that dealt the last points of damage in the grand final series against TerrenceM.
Chakki’s win brings him 15 HCT points, locking him for the NA Summer Preliminaries, as well as $8,000.
You can find all decklists from DreamHack Austin here and the full coverage here.
