DreamLeague Season 13 day 4: Liquid-VP barnburner the highlight of the day
The first day of the playoffs in Leipzig delivered on excitement as Nigma once again dropped to the lower bracket at the expense of EG. Vici won the Chinese derby shortly thereafter, and four teams were sent home in the devastating best-of-one matches of the afternoon.
Upper bracket: EG and Vici progress
The day began with the Nigma-EG matchup where KuroKy's side took the lead but failed to hold on to it. Nigma's plethora of early kills in game 1 enabled a complete snowball by Nigma who closed things out with only 26 minutes on the clock and more than a 20k net worth lead to show for their effort in a game where Fly finished without a single kill on Crystal Maiden. In fact, no one on Evil Geniuses managed to get more than two. It was a rough start for the Group D runners-up but they ultimately managed to turn it all around over the course of over an hour and a half of Dota
The next series was the Chinese derby between Invictus Gaming and Vici Gaming, which went to three games, Invictus' equalizer sandwiched between two losses where their Kunkka picks were heavily punished. They will face Team Aster in the lower bracket, who took out Chaos to survive in the tournament.
Lower bracket: a brutal game between Liquid and VP overshadows everything else
First it was the battle between the two South American sides, Brazilian and Peruvian Dota going head to head. Despite playing with a stand-in, beastcoast managed to prevail over paiN, winning their best-of-one in just 25 minutes. Chaos failed to show up against Team Aster, falling behind early on and never managing to recover in a brutal match.
Next up was the SEA derby between TNC and Reality Rift, and the Chengdu Major champions managed to stabilize after a poor group stage performance, defeating the debutants of RR in a comfortable manner. The day ended with a barnburner of a match between Team Liquid and Virtus.pro: neither team was expected to be in the lower bracket this early on, but one of them had to go home at the end of the day. A marathon 72-minute game with a razors-edge Throne hold by Liquid eventually ended in their victory over the CIS side.
The Leipzig Major continues with the remaining upper bracket round one matches (including the legendary derby between Na'Vi and Alliance) and the first two best-of-three lower bracket series.
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