Cover Image Courtesy: MGA 2019
The Asian and European Closed Qualifiers for MSI Gaming Arena 2019 came to an end today with ViCi Gaming & ex-Epsilon Esports making there way through to the LAN Finale, that will be taking place as part of ESL One: New York 2019.
The Chinese Closed Qualifier was played between the eight teams that had made their way through the four open qualifiers. Big teams like B.O.O.T-d[S], Lucid Dream, Alpha Red and Team Maple were among the qualified teams.
Image Credit: Liquipedia
The eight teams were seeded into a single-elimination, best-of-three series with the winner moving on to the LAN finale. ViCi had an easy time making its way through to New York, as they didn’t drop a single map defeating Recall The End, Team Maple & B.O.O.T-d[S] in straight sets.
Lucid Dream did not live up to their reputation dropping in the first round after losing to B.O.O.T-d[S], who took a clean ‘2-0’ victory. Alpha Red, the pride of Thailand who recently participated in the Asia Minor Championship Berlin 2019 were also eliminated in the first round itself, going down to Team Maple, their local competitors.
Both Zhoking and Kaze were on fire tonight as they finished the Closed Qualifier with an overall rating of 1.54 across six maps, according to HLTV. The two really carried ViCi brilliantly while the other three members responded well to the call and supported them by doing pretty well themselves.
Image Credit: Liquipedia
Image Credit: Liquipedia
As for the European Closed Qualifier, the eight teams competing were all tier two teams with ex-Epsilon Esports making its way through to the LAN Finale. They dropped just one map on their way to New York, defeating teams like FPL-CTalents, Turkey5 & AVEZ.
The mixed European squad did well with this team comprising of players from various different European countries. Their communication must have been really perfect to have topped the qualifier so dominantly.
With this, two out of the four slots available for the MSI Gaming Arena 2019 are now booked as two more teams, one each from America and CIS make their way through to the finals on 10th August. Stay tuned!