Villains sent to the Lower Bracket at TI9

Kindly remind us again what year is it, because, from what we’re seeing, OG and Evil Geniuses are facing off once again in the semifinals of a TI.

A full year after OG defeated Evil Geniuses en route to writing arguably the biggest underdog story in esports history by winning The International 2018, these two Dota 2 teams are back at it again. The only difference is that, this time, there are no underdogs.

Although one could argue that OG, the defending champions, are technically underdogs heading into TI9 after barely receiving a direct invite to the event, no one making a sound and logical betting prediction tomorrow will think that following OG’s performance over the past few days.

After all, we just saw OG dominate each and every team they faced up against. That’s not all, they also did it while ushering new picks and strategies that only they can pull off.

Both teams have put on quite the show so far at TI9, albeit, for different reasons.

For one, Evil Geniuses’ clown fiesta for the first few days of the event made them the butt of jokes. On the other hand, OG took no time asserting their dominance; they quickly proved to everyone just why exactly they won TI8.

Now, both Dota 2 teams are fresh off noteworthy performances in the opening rounds of the Upper Bracket.

Evil Geniuses, in particular, sent the heavy favourites, Team Secret, barreling down to the lower brackets by putting on the kind of performance that’s been somewhat expected of them all of this time but they’ve very rarely delivered. Meanwhile, OG did what they did best and played Newbee like a fool in a 2-0 sweep, including fountain-farming them into submission.

Having been responsible for sending Team Secret to the lower brackets, Evil Geniuses should have the better shot here. But, they don’t.

Team Secret played scared the entire time they were up against Evil Geniuses. Why exactly that happened, we don’t know. However, we do know that it was Evil Geniuses who asserted their gameplan and made Team Secret play their game instead of the other way around.

That’s not going to happen to OG.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about OG, especially with Johan “N0tail” Sundstein at the helm, it’s that they’re always going to play with the same disregard for the meta and the utter confidence, as well as reckless abandon of a fool.

That makes them a nightmare of a matchup for Evil Geniuses, who’ve always been at their best with comfort picks and strategies.

Of course, we also saw Evil Geniuses beat arguably the best team in the tournament, which means that, if nothing else, we should expect this grudge match to be a tightly contested three-game-long series filled with more ups and downs than all of the matches before it combined.

But in the end OG took the series 2-1 in a very convincing game 3, still props to EG for making the series very nerve wracking.