Trademark eSports victorious in ESL Major Series IX Finals

Trademark eSports became the ESL Major Series Season IX champions after defeating ex-Infused by a score of 2-1 in the Heroes of Newerth finals.

After having an impressive end to 2011 with a 4th Place finish at DreamHack Winter and 3rd Place in NASL Season 2, Trademark eSports is still going strong in the new year.

ESL Major Series IX, featuring a €5,000 prize pool, was a near flawless tournament for the American team. They made it in via the first qualifier, and stormed through the groupstage with a perfect 4-0 record to take the #1 seed in the playoffs. After a dominant 2-0 series over Frenetic Array in the semifinals, they defeated Gym Tan Laundry HoN (formerly Infused Tt eSports) in the finals.

ESL Major Series Season IX
1st Place: Trademark eSports, €2,500
2nd Place: Gym Tan Laundry HoN (ex-Infused), €1,500
3rd Place: TBD, €1,000

Alex "Sender" Wieker, support player for Trademark, gave us his thoughts following his team's victory.

"Game 1, we got most of the heroes we wanted, so we were pretty confident going into it. However, ex-Infused took some kills on us early while they had the better late game. I became nervous for a little bit, but we managed to use our better teamfight and had a good couple fights, and the game ended rather fast.

We started Game 2 intending to dual lane mid, but we scouted a dual-lane long lane with DR. We swapped our lanes and we forced him out a few minutes later, while winning all three lanes at the same time. As the game progressed, we traded a few towers but at a fight mid, we got four-man holed and all got wiped out. We became worried and just tried to farm. Later on, ex-Infused made a critical mistake that put us in a game-ending position. However, we made another mistake that lead us to losing two barracks, and that was the game.

In the final game, we set up the lanes where we would psuedo-trilane top against the Pestilence-Monarch lane, and that went well, shutting down his farm while bkid on FA farmed well. On the bottom lane, Tralf destroyed Pharaoh and Moon won mid. Our Ophelia player, ZFreeK, had a hard start, but we won all three lanes and were able to overcome ex-Infused with a few fights later in the game to take the series.

Obviously, winning any tournament feels great, but I would say this is a bittersweet victory. Even though the stakes weren't as high compared to DreamHack Winter, we defeated fray in the semis here, who we lost to at DHW, and beat ex-Infused in the finals. Also, it was nice to have something to practice for while HoN is slow."

Links
esl.eu - Source