The first day of The International 11 Last Chance Qualifier playoffs are over. With two streams running at the same time, eight series were played over the day—and there were some surprises in store.
It was an exceedingly even day of competition—all four upper bracket series took three games to finish. T1, Team Secret, Team Liquid, and Virtus Pro came out with the spoils in the TI11 LCQ upper bracket, though VP slogged through more than two hours of Dota to come out on top.
Wildcard became the sole representative of the Americas region after tonight’s games. The three other North and South Amercan teams—nouns, Infamous, and Tempest—were eliminated after their losses in the lower bracket.
October 10
Upper bracket quarterfinals
Stream A
Stream B
Lower bracket round 1
Stream A
Stream B
Virtus Pro was in trouble in their series against Vici Gaming. Losing game one to a quick blitz from Vici’s overwhelming Sniper, the Chinese team once again went for the same hero pick in game two.
VP quickly adjusted their strategy, picking up the uncommon Spectre to counter Sniper. Even with the counter secured, the game was anything but straightforward.
Both teams relied on massive ults in a game featuring Tidehunter, Faceless Void, Enigma, and Disruptor. VP and Vici constantly traded fights—and net worth leads—leading to entertaining battles all over the map.
It was one of the best games of the tournament thus far, and VP rode the victory into game three—another long one at 51 minutes—to finally close out the series.
Wildcard, with all eyes on them in the last match of the day, started the series with an unorthodox draft. An Axe offlane and Naga Siren position five proved to be a drafting masterstroke—though the execution from Cedric “Davai Lama” Deckmyn and Samuel “Sam” Anderson were also exceptional. The team consistently outplayed Polaris during the fights, using Axe’s initiation abilities to constantly lock down key tagets. Naga’s Song of the Siren was used to great effect to take down Undying’s Tombstone. Both heroes proved effective against Troll Warlord, and Naga’s constant
Though game two was more of an orthodox draft, Wildcard’s execution remained stellar. They consistently kited out Polaris’ two big cores, Lina and Slark. Ricardo “Alone” Fernandez’s Zeus only had two deaths in the game.
