Virtus.pro and OpTic Gaming through to Birmingham semifinals

Virtus.pro and OpTic Gaming through to Birmingham semifinals
posted by Abelle,
They may have won just one best-of-three series in the group stage, but both Virtus.pro and OpTic Gaming have already secured spots in the ESL One Birmingham 2018 semifinal.



In order to make it to this deciding round-robin, teams needed to win their opening single-game series and then win a best-of-three against their group's other single-game winner.

That means that winning three games against two different teams put them in a position to be guaranteed at least a playoff spot, and a strong chance at a semifinal spot. Three winners from three groups played single-game series against each other, and the two teams with the best score after those three games booked their Top 4 tickets.

Those two teams are, of course, Virtus.pro and OpTic Gaming. VP's performance in this round robin was particularly impressive. Their brother team in CS:GO have a nickname earned from the way they used to dominate games which now seems rather fitting for VP's Dota team as well: Virtus.plow




Virtus.pro started off the round robin this morning with a game against OG in which they made the EU squad look like amateurs. In this 25-minute game, VP 30 kills to 3 with an over 22k net worth lead. OG even held out until mega creeps were secured to call GG, but that happened incredibly quickly.




They made short work of their next opponent as well. OpTic Gaming lasted about three minutes longer than OG had, but were crushed just as hard. The team play from VP in these series was on another level, beautifully coordinated and executed. The game ended with VP up 33 kills to 7 with an almost 28k net worth lead accumulated.

With that win, VP had secured their place in the semifinal. Both OG and OpTic had lost their games, so the winner of the third and final game would decide which one of them would take the second spot.




Both teams had started the day with crushing losses, but OpTic had obviously recovered. They did a good job of keeping OG from getting anywhere with any of their cores and took a dominant - though not stompy - 28-minute win.




This gave OpTic the second semifinal spot, but this doesn't mean that OG are out of the event. Even without a win, simply being involved in the round robin means they've have earned the first quarterfinal spot. The rest of the quarterfinal spots are being determined today in the lower bracket decider matches on the main stream.

Header Photo Copyright: ESL | Adela Sznajder

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