A controversial decision was brought up once more in the Dota 2 Bali Major 2023 tournament as BetBoom’s victory over Tundra Esports yesterday has been deemed void. Tundra will progress to the upper bracket semi-finals to replace BetBoom, who was eliminated from the upper bracket without public announcement.
Yesterday, BetBoom pulled a shocker as they defeated Tundra Esports with a 2-0 victory in the upper bracket quarter-finals of Bali Major. The BetBoom combination of Alexander “Torontotokyo” Khertek and Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko stole the show with their outstanding efforts in the victory. A few hours later, however, IO Esports, the organiser of the Bali Major, declared Tundra as the winner and dropped BetBoom to lower bracket.
According to footage shared on social media, Pure was seen alt+tabbing in the middle of the battle during a technical pause in the match against Tundra. The recording was allegedly used as evidence for the organiser, which believed Pure committed stream snipe in order to gain advantage over his opponents. In his defense, Pure only spent a moment to watch Aleksandr “Nix” Levin’s live streaming session, which did not show anything from the ongoing competition.
Nonetheless, IO Esports determined that Pure had breached the rules and penalised BetBoom, awarding Tundra a 2-0 victory. The BetBoom management team has yet to give any clarity on organiser’s decision, stating that they are now focusing on their next match against Azure Ray in the first round of the lower bracket this evening.
The audience reacted to this incident and questioning IO Esports’ conduct in this competition. Most criticised the absence of referees in the team rooms, which made which made it difficult to assess the match. Furthermore, some viewers thought that the committee failed to implement strict guidelines in this tournament. Maria “Inverno” Gunina, Chief Strategy Officer of the 9Pandas team, pointed out that there was no action against Tundra’s carry, Neta “33” Shapira, who allegedly did the same thing at the time.
IO Esports has bee under fire in the last few days for the way they handle the Major competition. In addition for failing to address multiple technical issues that affected the tournament, they nearly eliminated Azure Ray team in the final day of Bali Major group stage due to a wrong call.
