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The first Major of the Dota 2 Pro Circuit 2021 season has come to an end with Invictus Gaming, China's top-ranked team, taking home the trophy. The 9-day long tournament ended with an amazing Grand Finals as Invictus Gaming reverse swept Evil Geniuses to win the Best-of-5 match 3-2.
The Tournament at a glance
The tournament began on 27 March with the Wildcard stage. PSG.LGD Gaming and Vici Gaming from China and Team Liquid from Europe qualified for the group stage. Team Nigma were eliminated in a shocking turn of events along with T1 and AS Monaco.Gambit.
In the Group Stages, Alliance, a tournament favorite, got eliminated in a big upset. Quincy Crew, Team Liquid, Aster, and OB.Neon qualified for the lower brackets. Vici Gaming and PSG.LGD continued their run of form to qualify for the upper brackets. Alongside the two Chinese teams, the South American #2 ranked team Thunder Predator shocked the world as they went through the group stage undefeated to reach the upper brackets.
The Play-Offs results are shown in the image below.
The Grand Finals: Invictus Gaming vs Evil Geniuses
The Grand Final was fought between China's top-ranked team and North America's top-ranked team. Both teams entered the tournament in the playoffs. EG came into the match undefeated, dropping just one game to PSG.LGD and defeating IG 2-0 in the Upper Bracket 2nd round.
Invictus Gaming was knocked down to the lower brackets after losing to EG but won 3 matches back to back to reach the finals in a rematch against EG. The match format was best-of-5 which means first to 3 games win.
EG started strong, winning the first game fairly easily. They continued to show their dominance in the second game by winning similarly. But everything went downhill from there as IG mounted an incredible comeback, winning the next 3 games to win the series 3-2.
You can check out the highlights from the 5-game series here.
The best moment from the match came in the 3rd game when Invictus' mid-laner Emo typed a simple "?" in all-chat after making a game-winning play. This simple bad-mannered gesture instantly turned into a meme with several players, teams, and event organizers acknowledging the flamboyance of Emo.
Once again, congratulations to Jin "flyfly" Zhiyi, Zhou "Emo" Yi, Thiay Jun "JT" Wen, Hu "Kaka" Liangzhi, and Chan Chon "Oli" Kien on their Major victory.
