The Chinese leg of ESL One Birmingham 2020: Online found some conclusion on Sunday, June 7, with the best-of-five fight for the title among PSG.LGD and Invictus Gaming, two teams with a considerable amount of matches enrolled during the recent few months.
iG was matched against Royal Never Give Up in the lower-bracket Saturday where they progressed to the Grand Final by sweeping in the final however they met the mighty PSG.LGD team. PSG.LGD remained unbeaten in the pool play before charging through the season play-off section. The champion team dropped only two maps all through the competition.
ANOTHER TITLE HAS BEEN CONQUERED!@PSGeSports .LGD We are the CHAMPION for #ESLOne Birmingham China Online 2020 🏆👑, is that make us Dota King of China?
Don't forget to vote our player as #MVP. GGwp @invgaming Bois! as always!#LGDGaming #PSGLGD #LGDWin pic.twitter.com/Ah93yMuGz4
— LGD Gaming (@LGDgaming) June 7, 2020
COVID-19 pandemic & PSG.LGD vs. iG
Since March, the Dota Pro Circuit is on hold because of the limitations forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, PSG.LGD and iG battled against one another in official online matches multiple times as of now, PSG.LGD holding a record of 7-1 series wins against iG.
The most recent win for PSG.LGD came in the ESL One Birmingham China division’s grand finals. PSG.LGD began the match with a team fight oriented line-up where they opened the draft with Shadow Demon and Lina, both in the support role. It was done to make the ideal set-ups for the Kunkka-Invoker-Lifestealer trio core. PSG.LGD won this match in just over a quarter of an hour.
> Patience from zhou
We took the first game after heavy pressure early game, Solid performance by the boys, we won the last teamfight in the lategame bring us to win!#LGDGaming #LGDWin #PSGLGD pic.twitter.com/G6EnUWrGRn
— LGD Gaming (@LGDgaming) June 7, 2020
Heading into the game two, they underlined on the early pressure and used the potential brought by Queen of Pain and a core Nature’s Prophet. “Maybe” was very clinical in his kills. However, iG with their Magnus-Juggernaut duo heavily pressured his hero, eventually leveling up series in just a little over the half-hour mark.
Though game, we made few mistakes and learn from it! @invgaming succeed to take back the score from us to 1-1
Game 3 will start soon
📺 : https://t.co/99w4NK3U7E#LGDGaming #LGDWin #PSGLGD pic.twitter.com/eI6pnkOxnp— LGD Gaming (@LGDgaming) June 7, 2020
Tragically for iG, who are holding up since April to win against PSG.LGD, that was the main game they could take from the opponents of the same region. The third game went down in only 20 minutes, PSG.LGD managing everything relying upon Lycan. The last round of the series lasted 30 minutes and that put Maybe at the center of attention again. Maybe pulverized the opponents on a 10/1/8 Templar Assassin. Above all, mid-laner Lu “Somnus” Yao, who is also nicknamed as “Maybe,” was the MVP on Sunday night after getting 29 kills under his belt.
And our #MBmvp contender for the CN region is @LGDGaming 's Somnus! Wish him luck against the contenders from other regions! #mbesports #ESLOne pic.twitter.com/JVjh9C1X6n
— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) June 7, 2020
ESL One Dota 2 major & the prize pools
ESL One Birmingham is a significant Dota 2 major worth $300,000. It had initially been scheduled to take place between May 26 and May 31 in Birmingham, England. But the event had to be rescheduled due to the coronavirus pandemic. There are four online regions in the competition namely, China, and Southeast Asia (SEA), Europe (EU)/ Commonwealth of the Independent States (CIS) and North America (NA)/ South America (SA).
The Chinese version of the event started with two groups of four playing best-of-three matches based on a single round-robin basis. All matches were best-of-three until the final which was best-of-five. The event had a total prize pool of $55,000 divided among the top six teams. PSG.LGD being the winners bagged the most $20,000 while the runners-up iG managed only $12,000. In addition, Royal Never Give Up finished third and got $8,000 and CDEC Gaming received $5,000 for their efforts of finishing fourth among all. Team Easter and Ehome won $3,000 each for their fifth and sixth positions, respectively.
