The Bali Major Drama: Pure Cheats, Tundra Penalize

The first day of The Bali Major was full of highly anticipated matches. As the day concluded, three of four Western European teams secured the top eight spot. Tundra Esports didn’t advance to the top eight on the first day. Fortunately for them, their opponents, BetBoom Team, were found guilty of stream-sniping and thus ended up with an auto-loss. At the start of day 2, IO Esports, the organisers of The Bali Major, announced the incident and gave Tundra the upper bracket spot, while BetBoom Team got moved to the lower bracket spot.

Karma

The incident spread like wildfire in the Dota 2 community. Immediately, the organisers also announced Pure got banned from participating in The Bali Major, effective immediately. Rumours had it; Azure Ray, the team that BetBoom Team will have to play in the lower bracket, would even forfeit the match if Pure gets to play against them. After much debacle, the team announced Roman "Resolut1on" Fomynok will standin for Pure’s steed in their series against Azure Ray.

The Game

The former Ti champion, support player, and captain of the BetBoom Team publicly taunted Azure Ray in their lower bracket match, but it came back to haunt him. In game 1, BetBoom Team did splendidly during the laning stage. They tried to build their momentum from their laning advantage after the end of the laning stage. However, some crucial mistakes from them allowed Azure Ray to hold onto the game. As Azure’s Naga Siren came online, even BetBoom’s Morphling with Aghanims couldn’t stop Azure, and Azure took the game.

BetBoom stomped game 2 with a fast-paced game on the back of midlane Storm Sprit and safelane Juggernaut. Resolution on his signature offlane Legion Commander also dominated his lane. BetBoom closed out game 2 with a score of 40-5 in their favour. In game 3, BetBoom once again had an early lead. Although they tried not to make any major mistakes which could cost them the match, Azure came swinging at them, forcing skirmish after skirmish. Eventually, Azure was able to come back into the game, taking it at 52 minutes, eliminating BetBoom Team from The Bali Major.

Not So Pure, is it?

Pure also had a record for some questionable in the past. Pure accidentally drew a letter Z on the mini-map against team Mind Games during his time at Virtus Pro. The symbol represents supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although the player apologised for his actions, Virtus Pro terminated his contract, and he received several backlash for his actions.

Spotify Warning For Tundra Esports

Tundra advanced to the upper bracket semi-final against Team Liquid. However, they will be playing at a slight disadvantage. During their match against the BetBoom Team, 33, the offlane player of Tundra Esports, admitted to using Spotify during a pause. Per the Bali Major rulebook, only Steam, Dota and TeamSpeak were allowed to use by the players once the drafting began. Neta "33" Shapira broke this rule by using Spotify and gave his team a one-draft penalty.