Discounting the recent mixed results, Newbee looked dominating as they crushed LAI Gaming 2-0 to secure the second and last remaining slot for Chinese teams at StarLadder X LAN finals.
In the lower bracket finals of the Chinese regional playoffs for StarLadder Season X, Newbee defeated LAI Gaming in a Best-of-3 with a clean 2-0 performance. LAI Gaming, who have been in remarkable form recently, could not maintain their performance against Newbee. The result was easier than expected since Newbee has been struggling, at least compared to their TI4 performance, ever since their captain xiao8 departed the team. The team had been dropping quite a few matches in the recent past, some of them to lesser known teams too.
With this victory, Newbee qualifies for the StarLadder LAN finals at Cyberarena in Kiev, Ukraine from October 23rd to 26th. They will join Vici Gaming thus completing the two Chinese slots for the finals. Vici Gaming had earlier qualified by winning the finals of the winner bracket defeating none other than Newbee. With this victory two of the participating teams at StarLadder X are confirmed, while the qualifiers for America, Europe and SEA continue to progress. StarLadder has, since the beginning of the last season, broadened their tournament by adding Chinese teams as well. In April, DK and iG qualified and DK went on to win the tournament.
This is the 2nd LAN finals Newbee has qualified for in a span of two days. Yesterday, Newbee replaced DK in the i-League finals in a tie breaker against LGD and HGT, after DK opted out of the tournament. However, Newbee recently withdrew from Excellent Moscow Cup #2 LAN finals in this week, citing a lost passport as the cause.
Newbee now has a chance to fight for the $245,000 prize pool of StarLadder which has escalated from the intial $80,000 by ticket purchases. One can purchase the in-game StarLadder ticket here from Dota2 store.
The European division will continue today with Team Tinker sitting at the top of the groupstage. The American playoffs are set to continue tomorrow, with only two matches left to determine the overall winner. The South-East Asian division is scheduled to finish by the end of this week.
