posted by Sun_Tzu,
Today's Matches
In the first game of the day,
Orange NeoES took on 
Zenith, who have been trying to play outside of their comfort zone and continued to do so in the first game of the series, which ended in quick and dominant win for Orange, who dominated the lanes with strong laning cores such as Outworld Devourer, Weaver and Lone Druid, forcing the 'GG' by 18 minutes in. While Zenith kept the game going slightly longer the second time around with their favoured Tinker pick, they still got badly outplayed and outfarmed, losing ground and eventually their base by 30 minutes, making it one of the fastest series of the playoffs so far, as Orange took it 2-0 in less than 50 minutes.Going up against
TongFu, many were prepared to write off 
LGD.Int straight off the bat, but confounding expectations seems to fit well for LGD's International squad, who seem to finally be finding their own style of play after being lost for so long, as they dominated TongFu early on and used a highly farmed 
Per Anders 'Pajkatt' Olsson Lille Lifestealer in order to out-carry the Anti-Mage of Chen 'Hao' Zhihao.For the rest of the series, TongFu changed up their gameplan going for multiple cores and stronger lanes, dominating LGD.Int in the second game and gaining the advantage in the third, being able to split push and divide up the fights in order to avoid LGD.Int's stronger teamfight abilities. Running just shy of 60 minutes, the final game of the series came down to a six slotted Divine Rapier Gyrocopter by Pajkatt trying to contend with Weaver, Dragon Knight and Nature's Prophet while two Barracks down, ultimately being split up and outpushed, as TongFu made their way into the next stage of the competition by the skin of their teeth.
Coming Up Next
The next matches of the lower bracket were drawn live on stream after the final games, in order to determine the opponents for
DK and Invictus Gaming. Orange vs. Invictus Gaming
Orange have had the stronger showings as of late, and even though there are certains issues regarding their core players and how the distribute farm accross them in certain games, the supports of Orange have been on point in terms of rotations, as well as the whole team producing consistent results. Meanwhile iG coasted through the groupstages without really being forced to up their level of play, and in their first real test up against
Na`Vi they crumbled, indicating that they have not quite yet recovered from their slump. All in all, Orange has the advantage going into the series. TongFu vs. DK
A preview of the Dota 2 Super League Grand Final, two of the strongest current Chinese teams will head it off in order to stay in the competition. While TongFu at their best show great consistent plays, they've also shown signs of weakness, as they can be beaten on lanes as well as in teamfight execution. Meanwhile DK certainly have the lategame execution, but they may not be best suited to exploited TongFu's weaknesses. It seems likely that the outcome will come down to how well
Fan 'r0tk' Bai and Junhao 'Super' Xie execute their respective duties, as TongFu seem better suited to punish a 4-protect-1 strategy than a multicore lineup.
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