After three days of intense Dota 2 battles, two teams have reached the semifinals of the ESL One Birmingham 2019. Evil Geniuses are set to go against PSG.LGD, with the winner getting a slot for the Grand Finals.
For EG, the battle to the Playoffs was a show of domination. The team was undefeated in the first two days of competition. This guaranteed the team a spot in the playoffs. However EG did not finish the Group Stage with zero losses, as they were swept by LGD. In the first game, LGD took control of the match. In the second game, EG tried its best, and despite a good performance from Sumail "SumaiL" Hassan, LGD simply was too good.
In the Playoffs, EG faced off against Southeast Asian team TNC Predator. In the first game, a Sniper pick by Armel Paul "Armel" Tabios gave EG some trouble. The second game lasted about 55 minutes, and EG finally claimed the win with Artour "Arteezy" Babaev's performance supported by SumaiL. For the third game, the Arteezy and SumaiL combination proved to be too much for TNC and, and TNC called GG after almost 47 minutes of play.
The other semifinals slot goes to LGD. In the Group Stage, Vici Gaming took the top spot for Group A. This gave them a Playoff spot to face off against LGD. The first game was rather short, as LGD easily took the win. In the second game, VG did what it could to force a third game. It looked as if VG would be able to hold on despite playing against mega creeps. However, a push from LGD forced Glyph from VG, leaving their Ancient open. LGD capitalized on that opening to win the match.
As of this writing, two elimination games remain. The first is Team Liquid against Gambit Esports. Team Liquid has not been performing as expected in this tournament, with Group State performance generally at one win and one loss in all its matches. Gambit, meanwhile, was almost eliminated in the Group Stage.
The other elimination match is OG versus Team Secret. OG initially led Group A after Day One, but after that continued to slide down the standings. The story is pretty much the same with Secret, as its Group Stage performance was not that consistent.
