The matches of the first round of the playoffs ended a few hours ago. The Europeans, Team Secret, and OG beat the Chinese PSG.LGD and the Russians Virtus.pro to advance to the next phase of the Upper Bracket. The Western sides banished their opponents into the depths of Losers’ Bracket.
Team Secret X PSG.LGD
In the first match of the series, Team Secret needed only 28 minutes to destroy the Ancient of the Chinese side. Apart from the decisive team fights, both teams played quite passively and avoided the fights in the early stage, which resulted in somewhat a boring confrontation with the Europeans getting a total of 14 kills compared to 9 of PSG.LGD.
The Chinese responded in the next game, tying the series in 1-1. The victory came by an excellent performance from Lu’s “Maybe” Yao Storm Spirit, which ended with an 11/0/17 K/D/A. PSG.LGD closed the showdown after 36 minutes with 40 kills to their name.
In the decisive confrontation, the Europeans returned to the series with the strategy of the first game and closed the series in 31 minutes. Without giving any chance to PSG.LGD, Secret was superior from the first minute and did not have any difficulty to finish the match.
We close out the series 2-1, and advance to the #MDLDisney Upper Bracket R2! GGs to @PSGeSports. #SecretFighting pic.twitter.com/l7TZRjxUcL
— Team Secret (@teamsecret) May 6, 2019
OG faces Virtus.pro
In the second clash of the day, OG shocked the French crowd by beating Virtus.pro. In the first game. Europeans only needed 23 minutes to stomp the Russians with a 15-9 kill difference and opened the series with a win.
The second game ended in just 19 minutes. OG proved to be among the best teams in the world beating the Russians with a 26-6 kill score. The star of the series was the Australian Anathan “Ana” Pham, who ended the clash with a K/D/A on 11/1/7 on his Phantom Assassin.
Meanwhile, The first teams to get eliminated from the competition were Team Empire and Beast Coast. Empire was beaten by Mineski while Beast Coast was eliminated by Complexity. Now, these winners will take on the VP and PSG.LGD in the second round of the losers bracket. All the matches will be played in the best of three series.
We're closing the serie 2-0 against @virtuspro .
ГГ ВП to them!#MDLDisney #DreamOG pic.twitter.com/QdlNr6gxpA— OG (@OGesports) May 6, 2019
Battle Pass Dates announced
Valve announced the release date for the Battle Pass for The International 2019. Its release will take place on May 7th. This announcement was made a few hours ago on Twitter.
The battle pass gives the holder access to in-game challenges and rewards (sets, treasuries, and chat wheel phrases), interactives (Rylai wheel, quizzes, voting for Arcana, special modes and team battles). Users can also predict the results of teams at The International and participate in the fantasy league.
Tomorrow… pic.twitter.com/3ybh3p1WBe
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) May 6, 2019
International 2019 will take place in the summer in Shanghai. On August 20–25, the Mercedes-Benz Arena will host the playoff stage. Dates of the group stage are still unknown. The theme of the championship will be the jungle and ancient ruins.
