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| DOTA Blast (file photo) |
By Ivan Saldajeno
SEATTLE--OG showed why they are among the favorites to win TI6 after downing TNC in a pivotal group stage series via a 2-0 sweep at the Key Arena on Saturday (Philippine Time).
With Group A living up to its "group of death" tag as the playoff picture there was blurry entering the final day of the preliminaries, OG, who won the Frankfurt and the Manila Majors earlier in the season, provided help in shaping up who will go to the upper bracket and who will be relegated to the lower bracket as they proved too much for TNC.
Amer Barqawi's Invoker dominated Carlo Palad's Tinker in the battle at the middle lane even as David Tan was stellar with his offlane Axe as OG took the series opener after 47 minutes of play.
Barqawi, this time as Outworld Devourer, again led the way for OG as he once again stomped his class in the quickest way to the ancient and helped the European club bring out the brooms.
The entire OG quintet, which also includes captain Tal Aizik, Johan Sundstein, and Andreas Nicksen, had kill-death records at above .500 rate in both games.
Now down to 5-7, TNC must sweep Escape, which eliminated Execration, the other Filipino squad in TI6, in the wildcard round on Wednesday, in their final group stage series to keep their upper bracket hopes alive.
Teams in the upper bracket, which will be composed of the top four teams of each of the two groups, will have two "lives", in which their first best-of-three series loss will just drop them to the lower bracket while a series win keeps them in the bracket. They only need to win thrice to book the first seat in the championship series on Aug. 14 (Philippine Time).
Teams in the lower bracket, on the other hand, need to win every playoff series to stay alive in the competition as a series loss will eliminate them in the tournament where US$8.7 million (around PHP409 million) is at stake.
Follow him on Twitter: @IvanSaldajeno
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