The International 2018 opened up with an awesome ceremony yesterday. Shortly following was Gabe Newell greeting all the attendees and thanking Rogers Arena for hosting the event. However, the first day of the main event has always been brutal for some teams and their fans.
Four teams have been knocked out from the bo1 elimination matches. With all four of the lower bracket matches being bo1 eliminations, teams had to fight tooth and nail for their spots.
Surprisingly, there have been some upsets in the upper bracket as well.
The International 2018’s upper bracket matches
TI8 kicked off with Team Liquid and OpTic Gaming playing the first match of the main event. As expected, Team Liquid went through OpTic Gaming quite brutally. Completely shutting Optic Gaming out in the mid-game, Team Liquid didn’t face much trouble at all.
The first game was a sight to see, with OpTic Gaming picking Abaddon, a hero that is hardly ever played in the support role. However, that’s not the only surprise. Team Liquid pulled out a last-pick Alchemist, and Miracle- performed extremely well.
After getting his Radiance at 12 minutes, Team Liquid shut down their opponents quite easily in the following minutes. OpTic pulled their pants up in the second game, but Team Liquid had a second-pick Broodmother for them, and eventually, they shut down OpTic Gaming again. With the 2-0 victory, Team Liquid has now moved on to the upper bracket semi-finals.
Virtus.pro takes a 2-0 defeat
In two very surprising games, Virtus.pro failed to defeat PSG.LGD. The Chinese powerhouse team came back into both of the games, even after having some rough times, especially in the first game.
Game 1 was simply spectacular. VP’s offlane player Pasha went for a slightly unorthodox build on Enigma, not rushing his Blink Dagger. But he pulled off some amazing Black Holes.
VP was doing pretty great in the first game, till PSG.LGD’s mid player baited out Pasha’s Black Hole and ended up winning the game from just that one fight. This game was a trip to the heart-clenching center, with LGD making such a huge comeback.
Lower brackets: four teams eliminated from The International 2018
There’s always something bad with something good, which leaves us with four eliminated teams. With the games being a best-of-one format, teams didn’t have much margin for error.
Fnatic, the SEA team that has looked amazing for the past few months, has been knocked out by Team Serenity. Coming into The International, not many people know much about Team Serenity at all. They are the new Wings Gaming, so to speak. However, EternalEnvy left the tournament with some wise words, explaining how teamwork is important and how he tries to look after every single one of his teammates.
We will definitely miss seeing more of Fnatic in The International. However, that’s not the only upset.
Newbee has been knocked out of the tournament by Winstrike as well. The hopeful revenge for Newbee is now nothing but a dream. The finalists of The International 2017 will now be watching from the sidelines, as Winstrike, the new powerhouse of rejects led by Iceberg, move forward in The International 2018.
The other two teams that are now eliminated are TNC.Predator and VGJ.Thunder. These games were kind of sad since two teams of the same region were pinned against each other. On the bright side, Mineski and Vici Gaming will now be moving forward in The International 2018.
We wish the best of luck to all the remaining teams and hope that The International 2018 continues bringing the massive amount of hype and feelings to players across the world.
