Cover-Credits:
Valve
North American giants Evil Geniuses (EG) and Chinese hopefuls Royal Never Giveup (RNG) have been eliminated from the Arlington Major 2022 and have finished in 9th-12th place at the final Dota Pro Circuit event of the season. As a result, RNG will no longer be able to directly qualify for The International 2022 (TI11) and will have to go through the packed Chinese TI11 qualifiers to make its way into the event.
Evil Geniuses’ chances of a direct invite to TI11 depends on the performances of Outsiders and Fnatic in their next matches. A Fnatic or an Outsiders loss will ensure that EG secures a direct invite to the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year. But if both teams win their next matches, EG will not be able to secure a direct invite to TI11.
Evil Geniuses and RNG fall to Entity and Outsiders respectively
Evil Geniuses kicked off its match against Entity on the right foot, easily overwhelming the young European upstarts with its trademark Abed "Abed" Yusop Ember Spirit dominating proceedings in Game 1. However, Entity struck back in Game 2 and Game 3 by playing to its strengths, especially by choosing to give its carry stand-in Jonáš "SabeRLight-" Volek heroes that he was familiar with: Nightstalker and Beastmaster.
SabeRLight- put in some great shifts and played second fiddle to Daniel "Stormstormer" Schoetzau who put the team on his back and carried Entity to victory, eliminating EG from the tournament.
Outsiders also had an impressive performance in their series that eliminated RNG from the tournament. The first game saw the Eastern European team make a massive comeback to secure a 1-0 lead on the back of multiple Dagons and pure magic burst.
They then went on to absolutely destroy RNG in the second game in a one-sided 34 minute stomp to secure the series and book a place in the next round of the lower bracket.
Evil Geniuses will certainly be disappointed with its performance since it has had a fairly abysmal time in international LAN tournaments this season. It was eliminated as the last placed team in the previous ESL One Stockholm Major 2022 where its NA counterpart TSM went on to have a phenomenal showing.
Another early exit will certainly be concerning for EG fans, considering that TI11 is right around the corner.
