The $10,000 GEST June which pits South East Asian teams against Chinese has reached its semi-finals after the first two rounds. No SEA teams remain amongst the last four names, which are the TI4 teams LGD, iG, DK and NewBee.
The GEST (Gigabyte ESports Tournament) Challenge continued on its single-elimination format today, with the conclusion of the second round seeing no SEA team making it into the last four out of the original 16. Out of the results, there has been one upset where DreamTime beat the TI4 Direct Invitees Titan in straight matches, eliminating the brightest of SEA's hopes in the first round.
In the second round, the LGD vs IG match was hotly contested, with the LGD bouncing back after a sordid first game. However, despite getting an early lead in game 3 they were unable to hold onto it, and eventually crashed out to their Chinese rivals.
In another quarter final, DreamTime nearly caused another upset when they took a 1-0 lead against NewBee, and pushed the third game to the wire on the back of a strong early game showing. However, NewBee managed to pull through and will face Team DK in the other semi-final. In the second round, Team DK eliminated the only SEA team to make it into the quarter finals, Arrow Gaming, in two straight matches that both finished before 20 minutes.
The semi-final matches will be kicked off on 20 June by LGD playing against iG in a Best of three series at 13:00 CEST, followed by DK vs NewBee at 16:00CEST. The champion of the GEST Challenge will get $7,000, while the runner-up and third placer will get $2,000 and $1,000 respectively.
This is the first installment of the GEST Challenge this year. The format of last year's challenge was very different - it was only a four-team tournament featuring two invited Chinese teams and the top two finishers of GEST. The prize pool of that tournament was also significantly lower, as that only offered a $1,500 winner-takes-all prize scheme.
