The groupstage for CIS Carnage has ended, leaving four teams to face-off against each other in the playoffs. At the same time, there has been an update on the match fixing scandal involving NEXT.kz.
The elimination group stage ended with the top two teams of both Group A and Group B: Virtus.Pro, Relax, Power Rangers, and Team Empire qualifying for the best of three play-off series.
It is worthy to note that the prize pool is completely self-funded by Ivan 'pingeee' Nikiforov. He is using advertisement revenue from his streams to give something back to the CIS community in form of this tournament.
Prize Pool:
1st Place - $2,500 USD
2nd Place - $1,000 USD
3rd Place - $500 USD
Meanwhile, an update has been received on the Next.kz match fixing fiasco, with the team captain Urazbayev 'Mantis' Yernar making an official statement regarding their departure from the tournament.
Statement from Urazbayev 'Mantis' Yernar:
We did not lose the game on purpose. In the first game we were faced with a high ping situation after the picks. So we did a remake, but it didn't help, and we played with 330 ping. Pudge can't even hook someone and we played to the end. The second game was pretty close.
No one from our players did bet against ourselves. We simply we did'nt train after StarLadder XIII (Last match was at Jan 5th), and this tournament wasn't key for us. We also talked with pingee today, and the matter is closed. Now we are not disqualified, we are left from this tournament under agreement.
Coming out of accusations of match fixing, the situation seems to have cleared up, with Ivan "pingeee" Nikiforov himself coming forward with a statement of his own. It appears that Next.kz suffered severe ping issues during the match, and their poor play was due to the delay, and not intentional misplays.
Statement from Ivan "pingeee" Nikiforov:
There were these statements from betting sites about suspicious bets on behalf of Next.kz, with implications of match-fixing. I've had a chat with their captain and eventually we both agreed that this whole situation stinks and we both came to conclusion that they should leave the tournament as this whole incident brings a bad atmosphere to the whole competition. So they left the tournament. I'm not going to follow up any accusations regarding those bets - it's up to betting sites to provide proofs regarding their statements if they want to do so.
The playoff matches will be played today, with Virtus.Pro and Relax scheduled for 18:00 CET, and Power Rangers and Team Empire at 21:00 CET
Source: joinDOTA
