#TI9: Playoffs Day 3 Results

The International 2019 has already proved to be impressive and epic, but Thursday... Thursday was beyond imagination. Each match had its own fascinating moments, own beauty, and even plays close to actual art. If you haven't seen the livestream, you've missed an exceptional show.

A hot warmup by Infamous

The day started with a hot battle between two American teams. During the first map, Newbee learned a valuable lesson: don't you dare leave K1 Hector without any attention since he would later come back for you and punish your whole team.

The second map gave Newbee an opportunity to turn the tables: pieliedie acted as a teacher of "tactical studies," and the 31:10 score in the favour of Newbee became the best recap of the match.

The third map, which is rather obvious, was the least surprising. Yawar as Lifestealer was showing some strong plays, although Infamous managed to eclipse his achievements with their Wraith King/Slark duo. Newbee couldn't find any means to fight back, and that's the story of how a South American team has entered the top-8 of The International for the first time in history.

Madness? This. Is. Secret!

Let's be honest, Team Secret was close to leaving The International 2019 because of how carelessly Clement Ivanov treated the agrresive plays by Mineski.

For the most part of the first map, the Asian team did with their opponent what they wanted. MidOne had nine deaths as Meepo while Nisha died six times as Visage - the core players of the leading team of the season were having a terrible match. By the 34^th minute, Team Secret had lost its last barracks. But what came next, deserves a separate recap:

It wasn't the only exciting play of the meet-up between two teams. The second map turned out to be almost as much dramatic, and the fact that Mineski managed to avoid the second loss in a row in a pretty much similar way is a pure miracle. The team was once again leading the game from the beginning - and once again Team Secret made an impressive comeback.

Do you think it's all over? The third map introduced another vivid comeback by Team Secret, and the crew now has a well-deserved place in the top-8 of The International.

Flawless victory

Here comes the perfect "textbook" match. It was so brilliant that we've dedicated a whole separate article to it. PSG.LGD is now officially among the few teams to deserve the title of TI9 champion. It was an unbelievably disciplined, well-tuned, and precise game, which is a clear indicator of how confident the current vice champions are.

Don't get us wrong, Vici Gaming was doing really good, but the plays by PSG.LGD - well, they are on the next level. Vici has become the second team to be unable to spot any weak points in fy's crew. What is coming next could be the possible "rehearsal" of the grand finals.

A common handshake

We've treated this match with yet another detailed report. OG continued its light-hearted and fun plays, but EG managed to score first. That deserves an applause since you need a very specific strategic plan while sticking to it and performing near perfect - that's the only way you can defeat OG.

OG lost the first map because of mistakes in draft, and Evil Geniuses punished the opponents. The current champions fixed these draft mistakes for the second map and the third one - as the result, Evil Geniuses fell to the lower bracket.

Tomorrow we are having three matches as well as the All-stars match. Day 4 starts at 04:00 CEST - get ready for some exciting action.