PinnacleSports Pro-Am finished last night with Sigma International earning the championship after a full best-of-5 series versus RoX.KiS. The year starts off well for both of these rising teams, winning $7,500 and $2,500 respectively.
Sigma International at MLG Columbus
The PinnacleSports Pro-Am tournament was a mid-ranged tournament with a decent prize pool ($10,000) and quite interesting teams. The "big two" of Europe (Natus Vincere and Alliance) did not take part as usual with tournaments who are not bringing the top dollar, but most other household names of Europe were present. In the end though, it was between the two teams perhaps most on the rise currently; Sigma International and RoX.KiS. Both teams often ditch the traditional hard carry hero and instead go for a number of versatile cores with carry potential. Mostly what they want to do is control the game by killing their opponents' heroes a whole bunch of times, force team fights where the opposing team is not comfortable and secure map control by roaming and pushing.
Sigma International took contol early on in the series, claiming two games back to back, utilizing the full potential of their mid player FATA- as he played a flawless Invoker in the first game and a lethal Puck in the second. RoX.KiS did not give up the games too easily though, and put up a proper fight but the games slipped out of their hands as it went into the later stages. The third game was quite a page of its own book, or more accurately, the Necrobook. Most battles in the late game went down between Necronomicon units rather than between heroes, but with the big Prophet-duo (Nature's Prophet and Death Prophet) RoX.KiS was able to outlast the odd push battle and take down Sigma's ancient. Death Prophet continues to be a plague in both pro games and pub games, being a force which is hard to stop. Speaking of an unstopable plague, Sigma picked the Io+Tiny combination in the fourth game. However it was shut down early as RoX.KiS got a beautiful team wipe near their top tower. After that point RoX.KiS managed to snowball out of control, keeping their heroes close together and not giving up kills while constantly forcing themselves upon Sigma, resulting in Sigma dropping multiple towers and heroes before eventually losing the game at minute 17.
Due to misscommunications, the players were not aware beforehand that the match was a best-of-five (GosuGamers was not aware either and the match ticker on joinDota had it marked as best of three). Sigma then came from what they thought was a done victory at 2-0 to having to play a third game. After reaching 2-2 rather late at night, their energy was drained and they opted to push back the last map and play it some other day. However, after discussions with the admin, the final game was played as well. As much of a stomp the fourth game was, the fifth was just as big of a stomp but this time in favor of Sigma. RoX.KiS did not get a good laning phase and, similar to last game for Sigma, a gank attempy went massively awry on the top lane where Rox.KiS, this game, lost all five heroes without Sigma even having their last one present for the battle. The Russians could not recover from the poor start and Sigma claimed the title and the $7,500 to come with it. RoX.KiS, after a long series, would have to settle for $2,500.
Photo sources: ESWC (headline), GosuGamers (news)
