G2.iG claim ESL One Birmingham slot in record breaking 5.5 hours series

G2.iG secured their spot at the $1,000,000 ESL One Birmingham LAN tournament and a place in the Dota 2 history books by setting a new record for the longest series ever played.

It took G2.iG five hours and a half to defeat Azure Ray in the best-of-five China qualifiers for ESL One Birmingham 2024. The series started with an 83 minute first game that would be just the warm-up for what these two teams had in store for the Dota 2 fans.

G2.iGvsAzure Ray

Game one went in G2.iG’s favour as they opted for a hyper aggressive duo between BoBoKa and xNova, the former going for a greedy DPS build on a position four Clinkz. His Bloodthorn, Nullifier, Khanda, and Divine Rapier Build for position four was however only the beginning.

The next two games went close to the 60 minute mark as well, with AR snatching the victory in Game 2 and G2.iG bouncing back in Game 3. A match point away from locking in the Birmingham ticket, G2.iG were pushed to the absolute limits by Azure Ray, who fought for their chance at staying alive in the series for 108 minutes. What started with 21 kills split between the two teams in the first 20 minutes, translated into a farm fest and led to rarely seen item builds.

Game four featured a Lion Basher build coming from BoBoka, a total of eight Divine rapiers, three of them being on Fy’s position 4 Hoodwink and three of them on Ori’s mid lane Zeus.

Nonetheless, despite losing game four, G2.iG were able to freshen up fast and came ready to claim the ticket to ESL One Birmingham in the fifth match.

G2.iG vs Azure Ray record breaking series marks another milestone for the casting duo John "johnxfire" Fernandeza and Mike "MLPDotA" Le Phoenix as well.

They’ve been the casting duo for the TI11 Entity vs RNG match which is the longest game played on the TI stage and today, John and Mike became a part of the history casting the longest series ever played in competitive Dota 2.

ESL One Birmingham 2024

Twelve teams
- Four teams from EPT Leaderboard
- Eight teams from regional qualifiers
  - Team Spirit (EEU)
  - Klim Sani4 (EEU)
  - Talon Esports (SEA)
  - Shopify Rebellion (NA)
  - G2.iG (CN)
  - TBD (WEU)
  - TBD (SA)
  - TBD (MENA)
Prize pool: $1,000,000
Total EPT Points: 26,640
Tournament Dates: Apr 22 - 28

ESL One Birmingham 2024 Format

Group Stage - April 22 - April 24, 2024
- Two single round-robin groups of six teams each
- All series consist of two games
- Top two teams from each group advance to upper bracket of playoffs
- 3rd to 4th place teams from each group advance to lower bracket of playoffs
- Remaining teams are eliminated
- Click here for Group Stage tiebreaker rules
Playoffs - April 26 - April 28, 2024
- Double-elimination bracket
- All matches except Grand Final are Bo3
- Grand Final is Bo5