A tale as old as time, Mineski disappoints yet again on the international Dota 2 stage, crashing out early at ESL One Katowice 2018. On the other hand, the other Southeast Asian representative, Fnatic have been performing exceedingly well. Fnatic are now one win away from making it to the top four spot and into the playoffs.
Mineski started out strong, taking out one of North America’s finest, compLexity Gaming (coL) one-nil and moved on to face up against Virtus.pro (VP). Sadly, this proved to be their undoing as no matter how well Mineski played against the Russian squad, it was not enough. Mineski eventually lost the best-of-three series to VP 2-0, which dropped them down to the Lower Bracket.
Unfortunately, Lower Bracket runs have not been Mineski’s forte as of late and ESL One Katowice 2018 proved it. Going up against multiple Major winners OG was definitely going to be a test. What’s admirable about Mineski is that they did not go out without putting up a fight, sending the best-of-three series to all three games.
While all that was happening in Group A, Fnatic are on a good run of form in Group B, dispatching opponents left and right. Coming up against the resurgent Natus Vincere (Na’Vi), Fnatic were definitely up against the ropes in the first game but managed to pull through in a one-nil victory.
This set up an exciting best-of-three against Kinguin who defeated ESL One Genting 2018 winners, Newbee in the first round. This back-and-forth match ended up going to all three games with Fnatic coming out on top to set up their potentially final match against Team Secret, who are one of the tournament favourites.
However, if Fnatic were to lose to Secret, it just drops them to the quarterfinals of the Playoff bracket while Secret will move straight ahead to the semi-finals.
ESL One Katowice 2018 is also the first Valve Major tournament to have a third-place playoff match instead of having a shared third/fourth prize pool. This is also the first ever Dota 2 Major to ever be played in Poland.
To catch the entire livestream, you can head on over to official ESL One Twitch channel.
