The first Zotac Cup Dota 2 tournament is coming to its conclusion with the grand finals set to take place tomorrow, June 3rd.
As anticipated, the two directly invited teams, NP and Newbee, have indeed reached the grand finals and will battle each other out for the tournament title on the 3rd of June at 02:45 CEST/08:45 SGT. Zotac Cup might have gone under the radar for many Dota 2 fans, due to the unfortunate schedule. Held in Taipei, Taiwan, in between two of the biggest Dota 2 tournaments ahead of the TI7, two days after the Manila Masters and ending a day before EPICENTER, Zotac Cup has been a very refreshing event for the competitive scene, due to the interesting mix of top tier teams with lower tier ones. This being their first ever Dota 2 tournament, Zotac Cup organizers did what others haven’t done in years: they granted only two direct invites and allowed six other teams from around the world to fight for a spot via numerous open qualifiers.
This way, we got to see at the LAN event, teams like Singularity (the Polish roster formerly known as ALTERNATE aTTaX) playing against the likes of NP. Unfortunately, for two of the underdogs coming at Zotac Cup, the road to a top three finish was ended in the group stage, where both Singularity and the new rosters of Warrior Gaming Unity got eliminated. The first two teams to exit the competition after the first day of the playoffs were Danish Bears (ex Cloud 9) and Digital Chaos, followed today by Fnatic and iG Vitality. Fnatic were defeated 2-1 by Newbee in the semi-finals while NP swiped 2-0 through iG Vitality to claim a spot in the grand finals.
Although both NP and Newbee were at the Manila Masters as well, they actually haven’t played each other since the DAC 2017 group stage, when Newbee took down NP with a 2-0 score. At the recently finished Manila Masters, Newbee had a perfect run through the upper bracket and reached the grand finals after defeating Team Secret, OG and Evil Geniuses. While the Chinese were the upper bracket lords in Manila, NP dominated the lower bracket, eliminating Team Secret, Invictus Gaming and Faceless from the event, only to be stopped in the end by Evil Geniuses who actually ended up as the Champions of the Manila Masters.
As both NP and Newbe were so close from taking home that shiny Manila Masters trophy, them reaching the grand finals of Zotac Cup should only mean a super interesting match up to watch. The Zotac Cup grand finals are a best-of-five treat that should not be missed by any Dota 2 fan.
We wish both teams the best of luck tomorrow!
