BetBoom Team has defeated Mind Games 2-0 in week two of the EEU Div. 1 Tour 3. The victory, which looks clean in the record books, was actually a hard fought pair of games for the Stockholm Major finalists.
And while this series may not have had some of the biggest names in EEU in, the match did feature a team that will almost certainly be headed to TI11. BetBoom has a 91% chance to qualify for The International by some metrics, and with it, and almost $2 million dollar payday. But every point counts, and every loss changes that percentage a tiny amount. So like any other team, BetBoom takes no prisoners in games like this where they’re expected to win.
Playing Mind Games
Game one started unconventionally. The Dawnbreaker mid pick by Denis “Larl” Sigitov did surprisingly well against the Necrophage of Aleksey “Ainkrad” Diveevskiy. In fact, Necrophage should have had a great time in that lane, but initially didn’t do well. Instead, across all lanes BetBoom was able to outplay their way though a dismal early game to try and scale to late.
But as the mid game power spikes approached, BetBoom started losing out against the naturally stronger lanes of Mind Game’s heroes. A great Winter’s Curse prevented BetBoom from capitalizing on the early game lead they’d generated, and threatened to flip the script on Mind Game’s opponent’s.
Then, Mind Games began living up to their name, mind-gaming their opponents into picking back fights into the Winter’s Curse repeatedly. Bad fight after bad fight left Bet Boom in the lurch, with Mind Games looking close to breaking the high ground.
But slowly but surely, the powerful composition of BetBoom came into play, and by the 35-minute mark, there was little even a perfect Winter’s Curse could do against the power of BetBoom’s Heroes. Mind Games dropped game one after a 41-minute slog.
Back to back for BetBoom?
Mind Games entered the second game with a similarly active composition, taking away the Dawnbreaker, and incorporating the Jakiro. Meanwhile, BetBoom’s scaling was almost completely forfeited for a more lane-shoving composition. Seemingly admitting they were struggling against the fights that Mind Games could pick, BetBoom’s game two strategy seemed to avoid fights. Or atleast get out of bad ones quickly.
And bad fights were exactly what BetBoom found in this game. Mind Games were able to really punish their opponent for the more passive playstyle. However, with huge vision, loads of creeps to support, BetBoom’s “lane shove’ strategy seemed to work. Especially when Evgeniy “Noticed” Ignatenko on Beastmaster was able to sneak a Roshan.
Even with the sneaky Roshan, Mind Games were able to pick up a kill off the back of this. But the sheer quality of their opponent’s to push was starting to wear-down the squad.
After a huge fight at the 30-minute mark, everything fell apart for Mind Games. There was just not enough damage to kill everything that BetBoom’s zoo could throw at them, and as a result, BB were able to take the Roshan again, shove lanes and take two full sets of barracks.
Evaluating these teams
These games were not one-sided and Mind Games played far beyond what their standing in the bracket would indicate. Instead, it was small veteran advantages, like the BetBoom farming better, and having a stronger grasp of their win-conditions, that tipped the scales. While Mind Games wanted to pick fights and win, BetBoom were able to beat them with stronger macro and more understanding around their draft.
BetBoom looks like a team on the edge of TI caliber. But if they come up against stacks that can execute on their own draft’s more effectively, don’t be surprised when this team starts to see some marks in the L column.
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