The Chinese qualifiers for ESL One started today and unfortunately for a lot of fans, DK and NewBee are already eliminated from the competition - after just one round.
Today any fan's dream of seeing Team DK at ESL One in Frankfurt was shattered as the team was eliminated alongside NewBee in the very first round of the Chinese qualifiers. DK won the recent StarLadder in Kiev in nothing short of a power manifestation without losing a single game. They are considered to be amongst the world's best teams if not the best by fans and rankings everywhere and is also generally seen as China's biggest hope in reclaiming The International championship title in July.
Unfortunately, they will have to miss out on one of the major tournaments outside TI4. Dreamtime.NGC put a very early end to DK's dreams of more European gold as they eliminated them with the result 2-1. DT.NGC have been exploding the last two weeks in which they have won games against several of the elite Chinese teams, amongst those DK and Invictus Gaming. The format is of the ESL qualifiers is merciless for the first round losers as their run ends there and then, something both Team DK and NewBee got to experience this morning. NewBee lost 2-0 to LGD.
So far, Team DK has not been adapting well to the new patch. This is an echo of what happened the second to last patch, back in October as 6.79 went live. Prior the patch, the then reformed DK squad was dominating the other teams but they lost a lot of momentum with the patch and it took them a few weeks to recover. Once recovering though, they claimed the pole position of China yet again and were holding onto it firmly until questioned recently due to their shaky performance. Most of those losses have been in various round robin stages though where the outcome of a single match result is not too significant, but here in the ESL qualifiers a loss is not as easily shaken off.
The winner of the qualifiers bracket will get one of the eight spots at the ESL One main event (the others so far being Alliance, Natus Vincere, Team Dog, Fnatic and Evil Geniuses). The teams finishing second and third in the Chinese qualifiers will join Titan, Scythe, Arrow, MVP.Phoenix, Invasion and Pokerface in the Asian qualifiers where one more ESL participant will be settled. That means losing in the second round of the Chinese bracket will at least give you a chance to qualify for the Asian bracket, by playing the other semi final loser for a spot. Neither DK nor NewBee will get that chance though while DT.ngc and LGD secured themselves more than one shot at qualifying for the $150,000+ ESL One. The recent scene development is showing that teams such as HGT, New Element and DT.ngc are diminishing the previous gap between the so called 'tier one and tier two teams' of China.
For all relevant information about ESL One, visit our coverage hub.
Photos by StarLadder
