Chinese teams dominate day one of the HyperX Dota 2 League

Dota 2 fans have been seeing a good number of East versus West matches since the International 2013 (TI3) tournament. The HyperX Dota 2 League continues the trend. Both LGD.cn and Vici Gaming (VG) sent European teams Alliance and Fnatic to the lower bracket and will face each other in the winner’s bracket finals for a spot in the grand finals.

Alliance was knocked out by VG with a 2-1 score. LGD.cn, on the other hand, went 2-0 against Fnatic. Both European teams faced off against each other in the lower bracket. In an exciting turn of events, Fnatic won 2-1 against Alliance and knocked TI3 champions to fourth place and out of the D2L.

Fnatic was playing with two stand-ins after Adrian ‘Era’ Kryeziu and Kai ‘H4nn1’ Hanbueckers had to pull out due to health issues and a flight delay respectively. They were replaced by Jimmy ‘DeMoN’ Ho (MVP) and Kurtis ‘Aui_2000’ Ling (Speed Gaming) for the tournament.

Since the change to Fnatic’s lineup happened on short notice, the team did not have the chance to practice with their stand-ins, but delivered favorable results nonetheless. Although the stand-ins are skilled and experienced players in their own right, Fnatic must improve their synchronization as a team in order to break the formidable Chinese teams. VG and LGD.cn are tougher opponents given that they have been participating in a number of major tournaments in China, and to make it to the grand finals, Fnatic must win against whoever loses the match between VG and LGD.cn.

The remaining matches will be played out tomorrow. If you don’t have an in-game ticket, you can watch the stream in four different languages —English, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian.

For those wondering, the HyperX D2L has a total prize pool of $50,000. The prize distribution is as follows:

First prize – $25,000
Second prize – $15,000
Third prize – $7,500
Fourth prize – Alliance – $2,500

More information can be found on the official web page for the HyperX D2L Finals.