The stage is set as eight Dota 2 teams are now ready for even more high-level matches now that the ESL One Germany 2020 enters the Playoffs. Matches start this Friday, October 23. From a roster of 16 teams, we’re now down to eight.
It was as early as Round 3 in the Group Stage when Team Secret and Alliance secured their spots for the Playoffs. After Round 4, OG, Team Liquid, and mudgolems also grabbed their own spots. It took until Round 5 when the final three teams, composed of Team Nigma, Natus Vincere, and Vikin.gg, joined them.
ESL One Germany 2020 is a Tier 2 tournament organized by ESL One and offers a prize pool of $400,000. The teams participating are from the Europe and CIS regions, with 11 teams having received a direct invite. That means five teams needed to go through the qualifiers. Unlike other Dota 2 tournaments, the Group Stage had five rounds and made use of a modified Swiss-system format. The Group Stage was held from October 5 to October 20.
The Playoffs are set to begin on October 23, with the Grand Final scheduled for November 1. The format in this phase of the tournament is double elimination. All matches are a best-of three format, except for the Grand Final which is a best-of five.
The initial matches for the Playoffs are:
- Team Secret vs Team Nigma (October 23)
- Team Liquid vs mudgolems (October 24)
- OG vs Natus Vincere (October 24)
- Vikin.gg vs Alliance (October 25)
Predictions
In our last prediction, we only managed to get one out of three correct, which was Nigma winning against 5men. We’re going to take another crack at it for these new sets of matches.
For the first, we’re clearly going with Secret. They have the momentum going for them and so far have been showing strong performances not only in this tournament, but in previous ones as well. That’s not to say we don’t like Nigma. Even if they lose against Secret, Nigma has never been afraid to climb their way to the top from the Lower Bracket.
For the second match, we think it’s going to be Liquid partly because they had the upper hand against mudgolems in the Group Stage. Still, mudgolems could give Liquid a run for its money, so we see this match going the distance.
We’ll have to go with our bias here and say it’s OG for the third match. They may not be the same roster that won TI twice, but it’s also wrong to discard them easily. Na’Vi has been doing pretty well so far, but OG is going to be a different story.
For the last match, we’re going for Alliance. Vikin.gg has been showing some good performances lately. We chose Alliance for the simple reason that Nikolay "Nikobaby" Nikolov is there. That’s pretty much it.
What about you? Who do you think is moving to the next round of competition? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
