Day two of the PGL Arlington Major playoffs stage is all about eliminations. Three teams will wave goodbye to their Major winning dreams and most certainly to their last shot at securing a direct invite at TI11.
First to fall were Team Liquid, who ahead of the elimination series against BOOM Esports were sitting in 13th place in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings with 890 points. A top eight finish was all that they needed to push themselves into the top 12 and to avoid Western Europe regional qualifiers.
BOOM were in a similar situation, the pressure on them being to some extent even bigger due to the fact that no SEA teams had enough points to make it to TI via a direct invite. Fnatic and BOOM are the last two hopes for SEA fans, but both have to fight for their chance via lower bracket rounds in Arlington.
With that in mind, BOOM Esports started the series with carry Chaos Knight revealed in the first phase of the draft, which gave Liquid the time to try to counter it with an Alchemist line-up. However, Liquid set themselves on a timer with the Alchemist while also being reliant on the Death Prophet Exorcism cool down and on an Earthshaker proper counter-initiation. Unfortunately for them, the beefy Alchemist was not enough to survive a six-slotted CK and game one went down in BOOM’s favour.
Nonetheless, they came back to the stage with a clear plan on how to even the series and they took down BOOM in under 30 minutes with the same Death Prophet but joined by Chen in the support lines, a mid Puck and a hard carry Terrorblade, who joined the fights from early stages.
The game went so smooth that Liquid went on picking the TB and Chen in the first phase of the next game’s draft, but by doing that they let the Death Prophet for BOOM, who did not hesitate to snatch it with their first pick. BOOM paired it with a Juggernaut, a mid Keeper of the Light and a position 4 Tusk and pressured Liquid in all three lanes. They didn’t stop from chasing Team Liquid all over the map, eventually cornered them in the base to take the series 2-1 and lock themselves for TI 11.
For Liquid, the loss means that next on their schedule is ESL One Malaysia starting on the 23rd of the month in Genting Highlands with a few other Western European Teams that will fight against them in the TI 11 regional qualifiers, such as Team Secret, Nigma Galaxy and Alliance.
