Title image courtesy of Team Liquid
The group stage of MDL Macau 2019 ends with the TI7 champions on top followed closely by Vici Gaming, Evil Geniuses and Royal Never Give Up.
At the end of a fairly competitive group stage, Team Liquid topped the charts, dropping only two games and claiming the top seed into the playoffs. One of these games included a very competitive hour long contest with Newbee, ending around the 65-minute mark after a climactic Roshan Pit fight, which also centered around a Divine Rapier.
Meanwhile, although the boys in blue had a strong start on day one, even with firebrand Syed 'Sumail 'Sumail' Hassan absent from the event, Evil Geniuses dropped two of their three games; the squad, however, managed to scrap by into the upper bracket due to the final results from Newbee. EG will have their work cut out for them as they face off against Vici Gaming, who claimed the second seed. Royal Never Give Up would claim the last spot in the upper bracket.
On the other side CIS juggernaut Virtus.Pro started the day strong with a quick 30-minute win against EHOME, which saw VP continually gaining and maintaing their advantage for the half-hour. However, Virtus.Pro dropped the rest of their games during the day, going 2-5 at the end of it. They will now have to claw their way back to the upper bracket, rematching against Invictus Gaming, who were the ones to claim victory in the group stage in an hour-long, and low kill game.
Despite their poor performance, one has to wonder if the CIS squad is taking things as seriously as one would think, especially given the fact that the event is not a part of Valve's Pro Circuit. With elimination on the line in the first round of the lower bracket, it will be interesting to see how the rematch between IG and VP pans out.
Rounding out the rest of the lower bracket are Chinese squads, Newbee and EHOME. Unfortunately, the former just finished shy of the upper bracket due to results. The latter, however, were all over place and despite a win over second seed Vici Gaming, went 2-5. However, with the extremely untimely absence of offlaner Zhang 'Faith_Bian' Ruida, who was injured during a photoshoot for the event, it seems no surprise for their less than stellar performance after such a nerve rattling event.
The Playoffs begin tomorrow the 22nd at 3:00 am CET, with upper bracket action and the always dreaded round one lower bracket Bo1s.
MDL Macau 2019 Group Stage Final Results
Upper bracket
Team Liquid
ViCi Gaming
Evil Geniuses
RNG
Lower bracket
Newbee
Invictus Gaming
Virtus.pro
EHOME
MDL Macau 2019 Format
- Bo1 round-robin Group Stage
- Top 4 advance to upper bracket of the Playoffs
- Bottom 4 advance to lower bracket of the Playoffs
- Double-elimination Playoffs
- Lower Bracket Round 1 matches are Bo1, the Grand Final is Bo5
- The other matches are Bo3
MDL Macau 2019 Prize Pool
1st place: $135,000
2nd place: $60,000
3rd place: $37,500
4th place: $22,500
5-6th place: $15,000
7-8th place: $7,500
