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Newbee: my early dark horse for a Top 4 finish at TI7

By Jor'El "Sheen Sah" Jones

Image courtesy of dotawallpaper.org
Image courtesy of dotawallpaper.org /
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Let me tell you something that you’ve probably glanced over thus far: Newbee has reached the semifinals of every premier they’ve attended in 2017, and it’s not a short list. Of course, there is one exception; ill get into that later. It’s for this reason that Newbee is my early dark horse to make a deep run at The International 7.

Newbee: Sheen Sah’s early dark horse for a deep TI7 run

It’s important to address Newbee’s one slip-up so far in 2017. They wouldn’t be my early dark horse pick if their dead last finish at the Kiev Major happened any other way. Strength of schedule got the best of Newbee back in April.

The Kiev Major group stage ended with six teams tied with 2-2 series records. Team Liquid won the the tiebreaker with a 6-4 overall games record. Newbee, on the other hand, sat at the bottom of the tiebreaker; a 4-5 overall games record forced Newbee to meet Team Liquid in the opening round of the Main Event. 6th Place meets 11th Place. That’s just how it goes.

Newbee won Game 1, but Team Liquid came surging back and won games 2 and 3. Keep in mind, Team Liquid has reached the finals of five out of seven premiers in 2017. They’re not a team that you want to meet in round 1, and that’s what happened to Newbee. TL is also great at playing from behind. They successfully defended their EPICENTER title in June after losing five games during the group stage.

And this month, TL produced a stunning reverse sweep at DreamLeague Season 7 after dropping Game 1 and Game 2 to Planet Odd. However, at Galaxy Battles, Newbee met Planet Odd in the finals and played them much better than Team Liquid was able to. The Galaxy Battles final ended 3-0 in favor of Newbee. I’m looking forward to Newbee facing TL again, but hopefully they meet in the semifinals or later during TI7. That way, Newbee can remain unblemished.

Thanks for reading. I’m sure Newbee has something up their sleeve coming into TI7, but what do you think? Reach out on Twitter and let us know who your dark horse for TI7 is. #LetsTalkDota has daily Dota 2 topics to tweet about. Thanks for reading, highlights are below.

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