Evil Geniuses win North American division at ESL One Los Angeles Online Major
Evil Geniuses further cemented themselves as the top North American Dota2 team by winning ESL One Los Angeles 2020 – Online: North America after making easy work of Quincy Crew in the grand finals this Thursday.
Evil Geniuses began their journey into ESL One Los Angeles 2020 – Online: North America on Saturday, March 28, when they faced off against ex-Chaos Esports roster, who returned to play under Quincy Crew. Although a match that was slated to end in EG's favour, Tal "Fly" Aizik and co. failed to deliver as they suffered a painful 1-2 defeat.
Despite their small mishap in the opening game of the tournament, Evil Geniuses switched into a higher gear in the remaining two rounds, where they secured two comfortable wins against CR4ZY (2-0) and business associates (2-1), all the while Quincy Crew produced the same results against the two remaining North American teams, meaning Yawar "YawaR" Hassan and his crew secured the top seed in the North American group, while Evil Geniuses had to take the long road to the finals.
By securing the second seed, Evil Geniuses had to first defeat CR4ZY in the qualification round. Entering the match with high confidence, Evil Geniuses were expected to make easy work of CR4ZY, yet ran into some resistance from former Fighting PandaS' roster, who won the first map of the series thanks to a solid performance from Jonathan "Bryle" De Guia, who carried his team to victory with 12/4/10 score.
Unfortunately, CR4ZY failed to translate their momentum into game two where they got utterly crushed by EG in just over 19 minutes. Artezy and stand-in Eric "Ryoya" Dong led the charge on Ursa and Leshrac, ending the match with 8/14 and 6/0/7 score respectively. Game three of the series was not much different from the second. Although CR4ZY managed to hold on for longer, they only delayed the inevitable as they got pushed on the back foot from minute one.
Arteezy was once more allowed to pick up Ursa, and produced another impressive performance, ending the match with 7/1/10, while Ryoya produced equally impressive 8/2/12 score on Pugna. Fly ended the match with 0/2/20 won Keeper of the Light with Kanishka "BuLba" Sosale and Andreas "Cr1t-" Nielsen rounding up EG's overall impressive performance with 6/0/10 on Abaddon and 4/6/16 on Earth Spirit respectively.
Following an inspiring reverse-sweep, Evil Geniuses got ready for a rematch against Quincy Crew, who caused them some headache in the opening game of the group stage.
In game one of the finals, Arteezy once more stepped up for his team and put up another impressive performance, securing 9/0/6 score and 25.7k damage on Terrorblade. While the Canadian Dota2 pro shone bright, his whole crew played exceptionally well. Evil Geniuses secured a lead early on and never looked back, with an overall solid map control, which allowed them to avoid making any crucial mistakes. The game finished in 25:37, with EG ending the match with over 15k gold lead.
Evil Geniuses managed to translate their momentum into game two, where they started slow, but once the match entered mid-game, EG started to pull away and kept on rolling into yet another victory. Arteezy had another phenomenal performance on Naga Siren (8/1/16), with Ryoya, Fly, BuLba and Cr1t- all contributing their fair share for their team's win. Much of EG's success in the second game of the series was due to their exceptionally strong team composition, which allowed them to outmuscle Quincy Crew in each team fight. Fly and co. ended game two with 24,250 gold lead, 39 kills and only 11 deaths, which only goes to show how dominant they were.
With two games under their belt, Evil Geniuses were set to seal the series with a perfect 3-0, however, Quincy Crew were not ready to give in yet. By picking up Bristleback for Arif "MSS" Anwar, Void Spirit for Quinn "CCnC" Callahan, and Wraith King for YawaR, Quincy Crew managed to outmuscle Evil Genuises and produced an impressive comeback. CCnC led the charge by outclassing Ryoya on Invoker and ending the game with 6/0/12.
Game four was rather slow in the opening minutes and although EG picked up the first blood, Quincy Crew held onto a marginal lead for the first 25 minutes. Things, however, changed later on when EG started to utilize their late-game composition, which made them nearly unkillable. Quincy Crew, however, refused to give in and almost turned the game around at 40-minute mark, but failed in their attempts in doing so.
Arteezy on Ursa had another great performance and played a pivotal role in his team success. Frustrated Quincy Crew opted for a few risky buybacks, which ended up backfiring and making Evil Geniuses' job significantly easier, as they managed to close out the series in 54:06 with a 33-21 lead.
With Evil Geniuses' win, both Southeast Asian and North American divisions at ESL One Los Angeles online tournament have come to a close, leaving us with South American, Chinese and Europe & CIS divisions. South American league will end on Friday, April 3 with the grand finals, while Chinese finals are scheduled to be played on Sunday, April 5.
Europe & CIS bracket will kick off on Saturday, April 4, and run to April 19, when the top two teams will duke it out for the largest slice of US $200,000 prize pool.
