Vici Gaming and CDEC Gaming both find themselves one win away from securing a slot for the grand finals. CDEC won against Vici Gaming last time out in the group stage with a long series, as they found themselves needing to go the distance and battle it out with a deciding game three.

Betting Lines

Vici Gaming to Win (1.79)

CDEC Gaming to Win (1.8)

Vici Gaming +1.5 Map Handicap (1.21)

CDEC Gaming +1.5 Map Handicap (1.23)

Over 2.5 (1.87)

Under 2.5 (1.73)

Previous Match Results and Statistics

In their best-of-three series during the group stage, it went the way of CDEC Gaming, let’s look at what happened in this series and see which conditions these two teams met for them to win a game.

In the first game, things took a surprising turn as Ori on his Monkey King lost in the midlane in a match-up that could have easily gone his way as he was up against Xm’s Ember Spirit. Xm completely outmatched him and ended up with an impressive statline of 10 kills and 15 assists while dying only once. Mirana has once again proven to be a real comfort pick for CDEC as they seem to pick it regardless of the meta, and true enough it played extremely well as a support to Srf’s offlane Tidehunter. They perfectly bullied the enemy safelane slowing down Terrorblade’s item progression and punishing Dy’s support Abaddon which ended up with a whopping eight deaths.

Game 2 was completely a Eurus show with a dazzling performance from his Phantom Lancer who went on full hyper carry mode with 18 kills and no deaths. He looked unstoppable as he led everyone in gold and exp per minute and just went to work killing CDEC members left and right after obtaining his first core item in Diffusal Blade. Ori played against Xm a little bit better in this game in a burst versus ticking damage match-up of his Void Spirit and Xm’s Ember Spirit which favored Ori in this game.

The deciding game 3 really brought the competitiveness out of both teams in the closest match in this series. CDEC came with a surprising strategy here by putting Srf’s Doom in the midlane against Ori’s Nature’s Prophet which actually paid off as the Doom won the early game. Everyone seemed restless in this game as multiple players kept switching lanes and rotating around the map initiating smoke ganks all which are probably brought about by the economic adjustments of the 7.27 patch which now gives more gold and experience on kills over staying in your own lane to farm. This game could have gone either way but CDEC pulled off the victory in this close match.

These two teams have been going back-and-forth scoring wins over each other as VG won this match-up in the first season of both DPL-CDA Professional League and OGA DOTA PIT China while CDEC managed to secure the victories in this match-up for the second season of both tournaments.

Predictions

This match-up may actually be as close as the lines suggest and could very well go either way. CDEC has been on a roll, especially their big three of Ame, Xm, and Srf who have been playing out of their minds just bullying all of their lane match-ups. This team is carrying a lot of momentum right now as they are yet to drop a single game, let alone a series, for the playoffs as they swept Royal Never Give Up and Invictus Gaming.

Vici Gaming started the playoffs with a three-game series against team Aster and to be honest even though they won that series, their wins were not as convincing as how CDEC did it. However, when they knocked the leaders of the team standings in EHOME to the lower bracket, VG looked like a completely different team with a dominant performance from Ori complimented by Eurus’ as their safelane carry.

I am expecting another three-game series here and am looking at the Over 2.5 line as this match is too close to be determined by a sweep from either team especially with so much at stake, I don’t see any one of them to go down without a fight here. With both teams carrying so much momentum it’s really hard to tell but if I were to pick, I am personally looking at CDEC to win this. Xm and Ame have just been more consistent throughout the tournament and may take full advantage of Vici Gaming’s Dy as he has been a support who dies a lot. If any of CDEC’s core take full advantage of the gold that they get for punishing Dy, it will be extremely hard for Vici Gaming to win here.