PGL Arlington Major entered the playoffs stage with 12 teams fighting for a share of the $500,000 prize pool and 4,570 DPC points.
However, with this being the last Major of the year, the playoffs results matter for some of those who have already been eliminated in the group stage and even for a few teams that haven’t qualified for the Arlington Major at all.
Day 1 in the playoffs opened with the upper bracket quarterfinal series and the first to step onto the Arlington Esports Stadium stage were the tournament favourites PSG.LGD taking on Southeast Asia’s top seed team, BOOM Esports.
PSG.LGD take Tundra Esports with them at TI 11
A win for BOOM would have locked them in for TI 11, but they found themselves up against a very tough opponent. Game one went down in PSG.LGD’s favour in a convincing manner, even though BOOM had a few good attempts to destabilize the Chinese juggernaut’s tremendous team fight power provided by Faceless Void, Zeus, Death Prophet, Earthshaker and Enchantress. BOOM were much more resilient in the second game and found a couple of favourable skirmishes with their carry Medusa, but once again they were playing against strong combos. Zhao “XinQ” Zixing stood out through both games for PSG.LGD by being the most important factor in controlling the team fights on the Earthshaker in game one and by finding perfect initiations with Tusk in the second game.
PSG.LGD’s victory ensures them at least 515 DPC points and allows Tundra Esports, who have been eliminated in the group stage, to stay in the top 12 DPC rankings and have a direct path to The International 11.
For BOOM Esports, the TI 11 ticket must be secured now through the lower bracket at Arlington Major. All they need is a top 8 placement, which means that they need to survive tonight’s first elimination round. BOOM Esports will fight for survival at the Major and for a direct invite at TI 11 against Team Liquid later today.
Team Spirit returns to TI
The third upper bracket quarterfinal match was an Eastern European derby between Team Spirit and Outsiders, both teams being in need of the win in order to book themselves a ticket to TI 11. It was by far the most intense and most entertaining match of the day.
It took nearly three hours for the two EEU teams to decide which one would stay in the upper bracket at Arlington Major, with Team Spirit coming on top courtesy of spotless performances from both Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk and Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek.
In the other two quarterfinals, OG reversed sweep Entity to join PSG.LGD in the semifinals, while Team Aster took a clean 2-0 victory over Fnatic, who much like BOOM Esports will now have to survive the first lower bracket round in order to avoid the regional qualifiers for TI 11. Fnatic will have a day off at the major and will return on the stage on the 11th of August at 10:00 CST/17:00 CEST to play against beastcoast. The latter have already secured their TI spot at the end of the group stage matches when Soniqs got eliminated.
Eight teams have secured so far their invite to the biggest tournament of the year and four more slots are still in contention. The next couple of days at the PGL Arlington major will decide the final 12, so stay tuned and catch all the action live from Arlington on the PGL Twitch.tv and YouTube channels.
PGL Arlington Major Playoffs Day 2 schedule
10:00 CST/17:00 CEST – BOOM Esports
vs
Team Liquid
13:00 CST/21:00 CEST- Entity
vs
Evil Geniuses
16:00 CST/23:00 CEST – Outsiders
vs
Royal Never Give Up
