ESL One Birmingham 2020 Europe – Where Online is spicier then LAN

The ESL One Birmingham 2020 is way on its way with playoffs beginning today. Playoffs are set to commence without one of the biggest names in competitive Dota 2, Team OG. With an unexpected 6 losses out of 7 series played, team OG is also under fire for crushing everybody’s expectations. Team Secret on the other hand, continue on their winning path after winning every single event they played this month.

Lets take a look at the biggest stories at ESL One Birmingham so far.

© ESL One Dota 2

Misplays over Big Plays

As pointed by fans on Reddit threads, team OG seems to be having an identity crisis over their playstyle. Fans felt that OG’s carries (Sumail and Midone) are trying too hard to play like the former champions. Unfortunately, the attempt to follow somebody’s footsteps has gone wrong. As much as the two prodigies are celebrated for their skills, they certainly aren’t cut out for the new roles they are given at OG. On top of that, they are also having team coordination and connection issues. As witnessed below, Midone and Topson make an amateur mistake of being at the frontlines together.

As we can see, HellRaisers did not hesitate to land their wombo combo on the careless players. Sumail who didn’t expect the two to get caught in such awkward situation, desperately dove into the enemies. This led to team OG losing too much and eventually the game.

Nigma steals the spotlight

Nigma’s performance may  have went under the radar in recent tourneys. Even so, there’s no doubt that they are still seasoned veterans. One of the most exhilarating games was Nigma’s comeback versus Team Liquid which took 72 minutes. The squad was 30K gold behind Team Liquid at 40 minutes (late game). Yet no matter how many team fights Liquid won, they couldn’t finish the game. Perhaps it’s all thanks to an underrated support player, working behind-the-scenes.

Gh, the position 4 support of Nigma, single-handedly killed Liquid’s hard carry while his teammates watched helplessly. Although Nigma got team-wiped several times, Gh took the enemy’s Arc Warden to the grave with them.

This indirectly prevented Liquid from pushing as their main tower-hitter was never available. Eventually, Nigma’s persistence prevailed and they won!

So much beef you can make a burger

Like many casual players, pro players too sometimes don’t get along with certain peeps. That’s the case of Midone and a player from Cyber Legacy, BigNum. Days before ESL Birmingham 2020, Midone (and Notail) played a pub game with BigNum as their ally.

However, the game turned south after a bad fight, where the team had no utility items to control the foes. Midone who was sour after losing the game, yelled at BigNum thru the mic, “LET ME BEAT YOU IN TOURNAMENT DUDE”.

Little did Midone realized, BigNum plays for Cyber Legacy, which team OG would lose to later. As the third game came to an end, BigNum tipped Midone, intentionally as a throwback to their conversation they had in the pub game.

Loss by Default

In other news, ESL One admins ruled that Team Unique takes a default loss in one of its games due to having only 4 players available. On May 30, Team Unique played against Vikin.gg and had the first game in the bag.

However, one of its players had connection issues during the second game. Team Unique was already dominating the second game significantly. Yet, ESL One admins ruled that playing as a team of 4 is not allowed according to their rulebooks.

Fortunately, Team Unique came back stronger in game 3 to claim their well-deserved win. However, the unconventional rule by ESL have raised concerns from viewers. Justifiably, it’s the team’s decision to play as 4 instead of simply being disqualified. In a matchmaking game, it is a similar case when a player abandons or had disconnected for too long.

The Playoffs are to die for

Although team OG have booked their flight back to bootcamp, we can still look forward to the upcoming playoffs. Featuring dominant teams such as Team Secret, Nigma, Team Liquid, VP.Prodigy, Alliance, HellRaisers, FlyToMoon and Vikin.gg, the playoffs will certainly not disappoint.

Matches begin today with Vikin.gg versus FlyToMoon and Team Liquid versus HellRaisers. Dota 2 betting odds are available several esports betting sites this morning. Catch the playoffs live at ESL Twitch channel.

Finally, over at SE Asia, Fnatic claimed the glory as SEA Champions alongside 15,000 USD winnings to celebrate their victory. Meanwhile, the Americas and China regionals will also begin their playoffs soon.

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