The Lima Major group stage concluded this morning with a few shocks, as previously slumping teams demonstrated tenacity to advance to the knockout round by fighting for a lower bracket place.
Group A has been the headlight of Lima Major with the champions of DPC SEA and NA Winter Tour 2023, Execration and TSM, will be heading to the airport today. Both of them failed to capitalize on their chances to win two remaining matches on the last group stage games. Meanwhile, PSG.LGD, who were shockingly abysmal in the past two days, secured a spot in the lower bracket stage after defeating Tundra and Ehome in their final games.
In their final games, Execration drew against PSG.LGD and lost against Tundra. It was the same story for TSM as they drew against one of the favorites, Gaimin Gladiators, and fell to Evil Geniuses. In the end, Execration and Ehome finished as the worst teams in Group A, going home without a single victory in the competition.
Gaimin Gladiators have won Group A with a respectable score so far, followed by Team Spirit, Evil Geniuses, and Talon Esports.
In group B, Team Liquid stood firmly as the world’s favorites as they won convincingly against Shopify Rebellion, Beastcoast, and Team Aster in their final games. Nisha, who has been outstanding from the second matchday, was named as the MVP. Following them in the top four spots are Shopify Rebellion, Entity, and Team Aster.
On the bottom side of Group B, HellRaisers emerged as a surprise on their last group stage day. Despite a sluggish first two days, they scored important wins on their remaining games against Team Aster, Knights, and Geek Slate.
As it stands, Talon Esports is now the sole Southeast Asian representative in Lima Major. In addition of Execration, who failed miserably in group A, Geek Slate who had looked excellent in the first two days was unable to maintain their performance and succumbed to HellRaisers and Team Aster.
So far, the Talon team has lived up to its reputation as one of the top offline competitive teams from SEA. Nevertheless, Mikoto’s magic will be put to the test tomorrow night when they face Team Liquid in the first round of the upper bracket.
Audience are growing suspicious on Knights
Knights, one of the worst teams in Group B, will also leave Peru today. Yet, their records in the tournament this time is unlikely to be forgotten in the coming days.
The Chinese Dota 2 team Knights has been accused of match manipulation during the Lima Major 2023. Audience speculated on the ground that the game between Knights and Geek Slate, and Entity as well, had unusual odds on them. The team was ahead in networth in game one of the series, but the odds greatly favoured Geek Slate to win, and as Geek went on to win, concerns were raised. During the series versus Entity, a similar situation occurred.
These outcomes were strange considering the odd against even ratio is generally pretty close due to the unexpected nature of the game. In addition, the first game of the series saw 48:17 kills while the second saw 25:10 kills, for an unusual total of kills.
Dota 2 caster Oleksii “Bafik” Bafadarov took to Twitter to share his suspicion about the aforementioned games, urging Valve and the organiser, Epulze, to investigate on this matter.
