Today is the first day of the ESL One Genting 2017 tourney and boy was it a day. With anticipated match-ups among a bunch of awesome teams, it was bound to be a day of excitement. Here’s a round up of what happened on the first day of ESL Genting 2017.
Group A
The group stages started off with the Group A matches with a best of one match. Virtus Pro would go up against a newly reformed Fnatic while Newbee faced off against Team NP. And while Fnatic now had the inclusion of Mushi’s former Orange Team Mate Yamateh, they were unable to bypass the Russians Virtus Pro, meaning they would have to fight for their life in the loser brackets.
Newbee came on strong in their first match as well and beat down Team NP with a 37 to 8 kill score. Following their strong win against Team NP, it was time for Newbee to go head-to-head with the Russians, Virtus Pro. The best of of three match saw Newbee taking the lead in the first match. However, Virtus Pro managed to claw themselves back with one win bringing the showdown between the two to a final third match. Unfortunately for the Russians, Newbees performance in the third match was just too strong and they had to finally tap out. The score? 34 kills to Newbee and only 2 to Virtus Pro.
Virtus Pro will now have to face either Fnatic or Team NP in the Group A lower bracket in day 2 of ESL One Genting 2017 with Newbee advancing on to the finals slot of Group A.
Group B
Group B was also the group to watch as two teams here were no stranger to anyone who follows the competitive DOTA scene. With TI6’s winner and runner-ups, Wings and Digital Chaos, both in Group B, many were hoping to see a TI6 grand finals rematch. But first, both teams would have to win their respective first matches.
Wings started off the match in Group B facing of Malaysia’s own WG Unity. While WG Unity were one of the teams to look out for in ESL One Genting 2017, they were unfortunately unable to beat the reigning TI6 champions. The same could be said in the Digital Chaos vs Execration match where the former dominated the latter winning the game in under 30 minutes. This meant with Digital Chaos and Wings winning their initial matches, the spectators at ESL One Genting 2017 would get what they wanted, a TI6 Grand Final rematch! And boy was it a match to end the day off.
The first game saw Wings taking the game with a close fight. While Digital Chaos’ w33’s Meepo did seem to pose a threat to Wings, thanks to Wing’s iceice Winter Wyvern’s Winters Curse, the former seemed to end up killing himself more often, allowing Wing’s to turn the game around and the take the first round.
The second game saw Digital Chaos regrouping and giving Wings a good fight courtesy of Resolut1on’s late game Naga. And while Wings managed to put up a good fight, dragging the round to 57 minutes long, they eventually had to throw the towel in, leading the match to deciding third game.
The third game proved to be a delightful decider with Digital Chaos utilising a second support Pudge. This pick proved to be a key decider of the game as Wings were unable to avoid the Pudge’s hook enough and when coupled together with the early ganks of Digital Chaos’ Ember spirit, just widen the gap between the two teams. In the end, Digital Chaos finally got their revenge as Wings had to tap out of the game. The end score, 42 to 12 in Digital Chaos favour.
With that Digital Chaos moves on to the Group B finals while Wings would have to contend with either WG Unity or Execration in Day 2 of ESL One Genting 2017.
So that wraps up the Day One Round up of ESL One Genting 2017. Stay tuned for updates for our Second day round up!
