Day Three of The International 2019 is in the books and three Dota 2 teams have secured slots for the Upper Bracket of the Playoffs. These are PSG.LGD, Team Secret, and TI8 Champion OG.
GROUP A
After the first two day of competition, Team Secret was the first to secured a top position with zero losses. However, Day Three was not as kind. In the first match of the day, Secret went up against TNC Predator. Despite a rather long first game, Secret managed to secure the win, on the strong performance from Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg on his Tiny. While some might expect the same thing for the second game, TNC showed they were not ready to back down. With Kim "Gabbi" Villafuerte on Lifestealer and Armel Paul "Armel" Tabios on Templar Assassin, TNC handed Secret its first loss of the tournament. Another Southeast Asian team, Minseki, also later gave Secret another loss.
This resulted in Secret ending in a tie with PSG.LGD. The two teams later faced off to see who would lead Group A. The first game went the way of PSG.LGD and finished in under 40 minutes with excellent performances from both Wang "Ame" Chunyu on Faceless Void and Lu "Maybe" Yao on Shadow Fiend. In the second game, Secret tried to score a win, but couldn't find an answer to Ame's Faceless Void and Maybe's Tiny. The result of the match meant PSG.LGD is the leader of Group A.
Regardless of the result, both PSG.LGD and Secret have secured an Upper Bracket placement.
Here are the full standings for Group A
- PSG.LGD (12-2)
- Team Secret (10-4)
- Newbee (8-6)
- Mineski (7-7)
- Alliance (7-7)
- TNC Predator (7-7)
- Team Liquid (6-8)
- Keen Gaming (5-11)
- Chaos Esports Club (2-12)
GROUP B
Meanwhile for Group B, it was Vici Gaming that took the top spot after Day One only to be overtaken by OG on Day Two. At the start of Day Three, OG had a 9-1 standing. That would go up to 13-1 as OG, like in Day Two, had no losses in Day Three. Against Virtus.pro, OG again went for the Anathan "ana" Pham carry Io strategy. While it didn't have the same result compared to the Ninjas in Pyjamas match, the combination of Io with Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen's Tiny proved to be too much for VP. The second game had pretty much the same lineup for OG except that Jesse "Jerax" Vainikka used Earthshaker and ana played on his signature Ember Spirit. That alone should be enough to give you an idea of what to expect and if you said OG, then you are right.
For the other teams, Vici Gaming regained its second place spot in Group B, overtaking Natus Vincere.
The complete standings for Group B are:
- OG (13-1)
- Vici Gaming (13-1)
- Natus Vincere (8-4)
- Evil Geniuses (7-7)
- Virtus.pro (5-7)
- Infamous Gaming (5-7)
- Royal Never Give Up (5-7)
- Fnatic (5-7)
- Ninjas in Pyjamas (2-10)
