BetBoom are champions of PGL Wallachia again after 300 days!
BetBoom Team became the champions of PGL Wallachia Season 8. This is already the second time the team has claimed a tournament from this series. However, exactly three hundred days have passed between the two grand final victories, which makes this date significant for the history of the tag.
The game day started with the matchup between Aurora and Team Falcons. Although the start of the first map was delayed due to force majeure (the bus for Aurora didn’t arrive and the guys had to get there on their own), it did not affect the outcome of the game. The drafts of Team Falcons greatly surprised the fans; before the match, skiter said that it was important for him to finally win specifically in this tournament series, since it would be his first trophy at a PGL event. However, already on the first map we saw far from his best Wraith King. As for the second map, the turning point was the fight where Aurora managed to turn the game in their favor even despite the Aegis on Kez:
Thus, two teams from the CIS region advanced to the grand final. ATF summed up their performance at the tournament with the following words: “We got fucked, and I have nothing more to say.”
The final turned out to be one-sided. Perhaps Team Falcons could have put up a fight against BetBoom Team in their prime form, but Aurora failed to do so. Analyst sQreen said: “This tournament is the weakest LAN of this season in terms of tier-1 teams’ form; there’s simply not a single team that is really playing well. It’s more of a competition to see who makes fewer critical mistakes rather than who shows some kind of high-quality Dota. But on the other hand, I like most of the drafts, and it’s interesting to watch the new meta. That is, the patch has finally revived interest in the old, monotonous Dota, and it can be further developed with future changes for the better” – and he is partly right. Whether BetBoom Team will continue to show the same high-skill Dota or burn out by The International, we will find out very soon. For now, it’s worth highlighting both the work of their coach, with whom they won a tier-1 tournament for the first time in such a long period, and the individual form of all the players on the roster.
PGL Wallachia Season 8 took place on April 18–26 in Bucharest, Romania. The tournament’s prize pool was 1 million dollars.