The final day of The International 2019 is coming. It's time to decide for the final fantasy lineup to conclude the TI9 fantasy challenge. Dota 2 fan and Luckbox community member Riley is here with his final TI9 fantasy challenge predictions to wrap things up.
TI9 final day predictions - let's wrap things up
It's finally here - the last day of The International.
We're gonna see two series for the final day: the best-of-three Lower Bracket Finals and the best-of-five Grand Finals. Since OG won the Upper Bracket finals earlier, they are guaranteed to play in the Grand Finals. On the Lower Bracket Finals, Team Liquid will face against PSG.LGD in a fight to determine which team will OG face in the Grand Finals. Thus, either Liquid or PSG.LGD will be playing both a best-of-three series and a best-of-five.
For players, the options are pretty clear. For core, your options are Ame, Miracle-, and ana. For mid, Somnus'M, w33, Topson; for support, fy, xNova, GH, KuroKy, JerAx, and N0tail. Composition wise however, there are several options you can opt for in your final day predictions.
The tamest yet safest option is going full OG. Since they're already locked on to the Grand Finals, they are sure to play the best-of-five series, thus guaranteeing you a good chunk of points for your final day. This means that you will miss out some of the points from the Lower Bracket Finals, but this also means you won't miss any Grand Finals points either in case the team you predicted would win the Lower Bracket Finals backfires.
The second option is having a mix between either Liquid or PSG.LGD and OG. This option involves a degree of risk, since there's a chance one of those teams will be knocked out in 3rd place, but there's the OG players that will cover on your loss. And if you end up choosing the team that eventually goes to the Grand Finals, then this option will give you even more points than the first option, since that team played two series.
The final option is the most daring, which involves going all-in on either Liquid or PSG.LGD. This is the riskiest since if the team you chooses loses, then you will miss out a lot of the points from the Grand Finals. However, if that team does win, you're guaranteed the maximum amount of points possible for having a full team that plays in both the best-of-three and best-of-five. If you are confident that one of the two teams will surely make it to the Grand Finals, then you can opt for this route.
Favoured lineup for TI9 day five Ame, ana, Somnus'M, fy, xNova.
Thoughts: This is purely my opinion, feel free to go with Liquid if you favor them more, they had an amazing Lower Bracket run (Upper Bracket is for?). I'm taking my chances with PSG.LGD tomorrow. I placed ana there because: 1) Offlane cards suck, 2) ana's an amazing player, and 3) As a silver lining if PSG.LGD decides to choke in front of home crowd tomorrow. But I'm still placing my cards on the fact that PSG.LGD will make it to the Grand Finals tomorrow, and I'm crossing my fingers that tomorrow, too, shall be the day when fy-God finally gets his Aegis.
And that's a wrap! Thanks for reading through my Fantasy Challenge predictions! The nine days past has felt like they've gone over in a breeze, and that sadly brings to the end of my TI9 Fantasy Challenge predictions. Best of luck with your Fantasy Challenge placement! Hopefully I'll be around to do this again next year, but for now you can chat with me and other Dota 2 fans in the Luckbox Discord server.
Check the updated TI9 bracket and schedule
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Picture: StarLadder
