Evil Geniuses Is The Only Undefeated Team After Day 1 Of TI2022 Group Stage

Republished By Plato

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At the end of 50 matches and a sea of draws on the first day of The International 2022 (TI11) group stage, Evil Geniuses stands apart with a clean 6-0 score.

TI11 group stage kicked off this Saturday in Singapore with an insanely packed schedule. 25 Bo2 series are played through each day of the groups, with five streams running simultaneously on the PGL twitch.tv channels.

Evil Geniuses 6-0

Evil Geniuses versus Soniqs, the Group A NA Dota brawl, was one of the five series that opened the battle for a spot in the TI11 playoffs. EG started firm, landing a clean 2-0 victory over their regional foes, but given their overall performance through the Dota Pro Circuit, not many were ready for what came next.

Evil Geniuses were one of the few teams that played three series on the first day of the groups and the only team to end the day with a clean 6-0 game score. Besides Soniqs, they also cut through two of the favourite teams at the Aegis of Champions, PSG.LGD and OG.

In both games versus PSG.LGD, the NA team built a gigantic lead during the laning stage. In game one, they found early kills in all three lanes to get a 8-2 kill score by the 10-minute mark, while the second game went even worse for the Chinese, who were led 18 to 1 in kill score by the 15-minute mark.

Against OG, the first game looked a lot more balanced, both teams trading kills and staying even mainly courtesy of OG’s itemization, meant to kite Artour “Arteezy” Babaev’s Ursa. With four Force Staffs and two Eul’s Scepters on their team, OG were able to drag the game into a late game scenario where they hoped to be able to turn the tide completely in their favour with Terrorblade. However, a couple of team fights taken near the EG base sealed the deal for the NA juggernauts, who hit even harder in game two.

Much like PSG.LGD, OG found themselves led 12 to 1 in kill score by the 15 minute mark and tapped out under 25 minutes, when EG were 34 to 5 and had over 20k gold advantage.

That marked the only defeat for OG on Day 1, which puts them tied with Team Liquid in second place in Group A. Fourth place in the group also has two teams tied, Hokori and Gaimin Gladiators, both ending the day 3-3.

Day 1 Surprises

While EG have delivered a pleasant surprise with their clean 6-0 run, the absolute underdogs of TI11, Hokori have also taken everyone by surprise.

While they will start the next year’s DPC from Division II, although they are TI11 SA regional qualifiers winners, Hokori tied all their three series scheduled for day 1. One of the ties was registered versus PSG.LGD, who got run over by the SA underdogs in the second game of their direct confrontation.

Hokori picked an offlane Marci who disturbed all three lanes to finish the game 13/2/8, while the entire game featured a plethora of Godlike streaks between the three Hokori cores.

At the end of Day 1, PSG.LGD is probably the most unexpected team to struggle. They finished the day in the bottom four of Group A, with two draws and one defeat.

Worrisome Day 1 for SEA

With TI11 held in Singapore, the SEA fans are looking forward to seeing their regional heroes on the biggest tournament stage. However, for now, all three SEA teams, Talon Esports, Fnatic and Boom Esports are at the bottom of their respective groups.

Fnatic and Talon are the bottom two teams in Group B with one loss and one draw score, while BOOM Esports are in the bottom two of Group A with one draw and two losses.

Group B was all about draw results. Four teams finished tied for first place in the group, and four more are tied for the last place, while only TSM.FTX and Tundra sit in the middle of the pack, both also tied.

Day 2 of the TI11 group stage will feature another set of 25 Bo2 series and it’s set to kickoff at 10:00 SGT/04:00 CEST. All three big surprises of day one, EG, Hokori and PSG.LGD will be playing in the opening series.