Photo courtesy of Newbee
After three rounds, Newbee is the only team left standing in the lower brackets of AMD SAPPHIRE Dota Pit.
All of the lower bracket games until the finals were scheduled as brutal best-of-one elimination series. There was no mercy given to the teams that were not able to make the cut as one of the two upper bracket teams. That honor had been earned by Team Liquid and ViCi Gaming.
When the carnage had come to an end, five teams had been eliminated. It was Newbee who was left standing, still alive and holding onto a prayer and hope for a championship title. Armed with at least a third place finish, 45 qualifying points and a sizeable prize, the Chinese team will take on the loser of Team Liquid and ViCi Gaming next.
Crawling their way back into contention, Newbee had cemented their place with a shocking comeback in the final few moments of their last chance series.
Lower Bracket Round 1
The first series of the day was a cross continent battle of North and South American representatives. Immortals and SG e-sports went head to head in a surprising turn of events. As had been the case previously, SG had a strong start, finding kills all over the map and looking to be confident in their strategy. An 8k lead was locked in, but began to dwindle down with the split push delaying the game for Anti Mage to come online and start to become a threat. When things looked to be slipping away, the SA team took control back, capitalizing on one big mistake by Immortals and maintained a firm grasp on it until the end to claim the victory.
The second series between OG and Fnatic played out as expected. The European dream green team had great start and continued to dismantle Fnatic rather quickly. From start to finish things went according to plan for OG, taking every lane, maintaining superior vision and firm map control. Things just continued to fall apart for Fnatic at every turn, unable to find their footing and were knocked down and out in 21 minutes with sub-par results and performance once again.
Lower Bracket Round 2
Advancing into the second round, SG esports found themselves face to face against Virtus.Pro, the CIS juggernauts. Virtus.Pro had not looked to be in prime form since the patch change dropped days ago, while SG esports seemed to be taking advantage of the changes and more even playing field. Putting up a better fight than expected, with an event start, SG began to fall behind. Superior stuns and survivability, VP dominated the fights and it seemed that SG had been outdrafted. Steamrolling towards the end, VP had ran over the SA team to secure at least 15 qualifying points and another top 4 position.
OG moved along to come up against the TI7 runner up team -Newbee. Although the extent of their lead waxed and waned, OG never let it slip from their favor until about 22 minutes in. Farming away on Monkey King and Mirana Newbee steadily gained traction and turned the tables on OG. Once they seized the lead, there was no taking them down. With their victory, Newbee was successful in securing another minimum of 15 qualifying points and at least top 4 position.
Lower Bracket Round 3
The final unforgiving best-of-one lower bracket elimination series saw Virtus.Pro pick up a Bane for the midlane. The CIS team took the bull by the horns immediately and set the pace for Newbee to keep up with. With a significant lead, VP was looking to close out the game with almost a 18k gold lead, but Newbee weren't ready to wave teh flag. As Virtus.Pro was poised to end the game, Newbee turned the tables and knocked them down with two incredible back to back fights. The networth lead dropped to only 1k and it was now Newbee's time to take control. Within a span of less than 5 mins, Newbee shifted everything into their favor including the series win and eliminated Virtus.Pro.
