Mr. Cat Invitational Europe: Virtus.pro get revenge on Empire, win $25,000
We have a winner, folks. Virtus.pro defeats Team Empire in the Mr. Cat Invitational Europe, a new tournament series with a sizable prize pool. $50,000 is awarded to the top-placing teams. Team Secret placed third, with Prodota Gaming making a fourth-place run.
What happened between VP and Empire?
Team Empire and Prodota Gaming each reached Stage 2 of Mr. Cat Invitational Europe because of successful runs through the Stage 1 bracket. Given the tournament format, Empire and PG were guaranteed a portion of the prize pool by advancing to the second stage. VP and Secret were essentially paid to participate because they received direct invites to Stage 2.
Virtus.pro waited for a winner to come out of the losers’ bracket, and VP found themselves in a tie with Empire. VP appeared ready to advance, taking Game 1. Few viewers expected the final outcome of the series — a reverse sweep in favor of Empire. The tournament favorites landed in the losers’ bracket ASAP. Fortunately, this current iteration of Virtus.pro is mentally tough and managed to right their ship before disaster could strike.
Meeting Prodota Gaming in the first losers’ bracket match was fortunate for VP. Virtus.pro still had their missteps, dropping Game 2 to PG, but Prodota Gaming (even on their best day) won’t take a series from VP at the moment. OG has been the only team to stifle Virtus.pro over the past month.
As VP moved through the losers’ bracket, they met Team Secret. Secret certainly has a solid collection of Dota 2 players, but their consistency as a team has been waning. Virtus.pro sweeps Team Secret in a match determining who meets Team Empire in the Mr. Cat Invitational Europe grand finals.
All grand finals highlights are below, and the matches were great. Unlike the EPICENTER AQ, the final match went to three games. Every single EPICENTER AQ series resulted in a sweep.
Any thoughts on Mr. Cat Invitational Europe? Who did you think would win, and why? Let me know on Twitter.