How Spirit Lost DreamHack Open November To Gambit
Spirit have lost the Grand Finals of DreamHack Open November in stunning fashion. They kicked things off with a 16-6 win over Gambit on Dust2, but they eventually lost three straight maps and had to concede the trophy to a much stronger Gambit. In our preview for this event, we highlighted the win conditions for these two teams, and we most certainly didn’t expect Spirit to roll over like this. Why did they?
In their defence, the online era has produced some wild results in recent months. Barely any teams have managed to establish some sort of ‘streak’ in their tournaments. While some have definitely set themselves apart from others in terms of trophy count, there were only a few instances of teams retaining their dominant level from one event to the next. Sometimes, Heroic would win, then FaZe, then Astralis, then Heroic again… the results have definitely not been as clean-cut as they were with offline tournaments. But the results of DreamHack Open November cannot possibly be explained away with some sort of online inconsistencies. Gambit went above and beyond to beat expectations and Spirit absolutely dropped the ball as the tournament favourites - with the exception of one player.
THE ONLY BRIGHT SIDE FOR SPIRIT
The story of Nikolay "mir" Bityukov is not unlike the story of Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev within Natus Vincere. Even with this horrible Grand Finals match, mir holds a 1.26 rating for the entire event. That puts him in third place, just behind Thomas "TMB" Bundsbæk from AGF and Dmitry "sh1ro" Sokolov on a stunning 1.38 rating. Abay "Hobbit" Khassenov and Sergey "Ax1Le" Rykhtorov supported their Gambit colleague well, which the Spirit players failed to do on their camp. This became painfully obvious in the Grand Finals, when players like Leonid “chopper” Vishnyakov and Viktor “sdy” Oduzhev disappeared from the scoreboard almost entirely.
Click to enlargeBut s1mple would probably never have recorded a 0.35 rating in any instance, which is something that mir most definitely did on the second map of the Grand Finals. Maybe this was the moment that signalled the collapse of the team in this best-of-five. It is one thing to lose a map, but an entirely different level of shame to secure just five kills throughout.
DID GAMBIT WIN, OR DID SPIRIT LOSE?
To be fair, Spirit losing this match is only part of the equation. Gambit put in the work and sh1ro took the lead at the most crucial moment, netting himself a 1.45 rating and a KDR of about 2.0, which is a ridiculous figure for a match of this length. Hobbit obviously prepared them well for this encounter and on top of his shotcalling, he was also the second most important fragger of the evening. This is something that chopper failed to do entirely for Spirit.
So the curse of the domestic match-ups has struck once more. We’ve now seen time and time again how Spirit can absolutely crush even the top European brass under the right circumstances, but fail spectacularly against other CIS teams. But this isn’t the whole story either. Spirit have shown signs of weakness throughout the Group Stage already. Even in their 2-0 victories, they were not 100% present. In their first two matches, they absolutely crushed flowskola and Apeks on the respective first maps. Then, however, they quickly broke in and let their opponents run up huge leads. While they did eventually win all of their maps, they were dragged into overtime or at least forced to play the map to full length.
As it appears, Spirit always had a great game plan for the first map. They easily bested flowskola, Apeks, and even Gambit fell on a 16-6 scoreline on Dust2. But afterwards, they seemed to run out of steam. Often times, they didn’t know what to do and how to react to certain scenarios. They let themselves be outplayed. In the Group Stage, their individual skill helped them mask over this issue, but as soon as they had to face a tough challenger, they collapsed entirely. A combined 15 rounds on the last three maps was all that Spirit got out of the Grand Finals. However, Gambit have stood strong and in their preparations, they have actually looked beyond just the first map of this best-of-five. They have done well throughout the tournament and their Group Stage performance already showed why they were destined to make this a great Grand Finals. And it would have been, if Spirit had actually shown up to play. They left all of their cunning and individual prowess in Europe, so hopefully they can get that back once they arrive at DreamHack Masters Winter EU.
But as it stands, Gambit deserve every penny of their winnings. A performance like this is indicative of great potential and with sh1ro quickly growing to be one of his region’s hottest prospects, Gambit might finally have stepped out of the shadows of their CIS brethren for good. Maybe they should now be the ones to compete in European tournaments, as the time is ripe for them to start tackling bigger opponents.
Images via DreamHack | Starladder