BOOM Esports vs Team SMG: Three tight maps await us

South-East Asia’s first DPC league of the 2021/22 season continues on Wednesday, December 15. BOOM Esports and Team SMG will meet in the second matchday of the elite division.

DPC SEA 2021/22 Tour 1: Division I is an online Dota 2 tournament from December 01, 2021, to January 22, 2022. The top eight teams from the SEA region will battle it out for $205,000. On top of the cash prizes, the teams will also fight for three entries to the majors and the crucial DPC points needed to qualify for T11.

BOOM is off to a great start in the new DPC cycle. They beat OB.Neon 2-0, but their opponent was not a contender for the majors. Fnatic was the first serious test for the new BOOM line-up, which the Philippine team passed incredibly well, shutting down the formidable tag with an easy 2-0 score.

The BOOM Esports team promoted only the Indonesian squad all last season. While the Indonesians still finished the first DPC league more or less normally, they failed the second and even lost a slot in the Asian region’s elite. But the boys will start the new DPC cycle in the elite, thanks to the exclusion for match-fixing of Omega Esports.

The organisation has dropped the Indonesian side. The past’s failure could not have positively affected all the former boom players. They are now a Filipino team whose players have performed well throughout the off-season, even winning their ninth BTS season in SEA.

The only one to represent this team indefinitely is Indonesian Fbz, who has played in the third position on this team since 2017. The new faces of BOOM Esports are just the ex-neons who wowed the world with their play in the Singapore majors, Yopaj and skem.

This squad is approaching the new season in great form, and I predict that one of the slots in the majors is for them.

Team SMG’s first elite match proved to be extremely successful. Defeating Fnatic (2-0) on two maps in less than 30 minutes was a sensation. Next up was a game against the main red-boss T1 (0-2), but the TI10 participant could not be beaten. Last weekend was a 2-0 victory over Motivate.Trust Gaming, with the SMG boys picking not exactly reliable draft picks, didn’t stop them from rolling over MTG on two cards.

The bookies have too much faith in these elite debutants, although they are no different to the current BOOM guys. The game will be tough and not necessarily a winning one. If SMG wants to continue to fight for the majors, they must win. Otherwise, they can only count on the Wild Card.

Team SMG has some stellar Malaysian players at their disposal who could easily strengthen any Southeast Asian Tier-1 team, but they are not yet able to reach the result in their current stack. MidOne and Moon carry a lot of weight in the region.

Some experts saw this team as possible winners of the Asian qualifiers for the International. This further underlines the level of stellar characters at some of the positions. But after failing to qualify for the main tournament of the year, the boys began to play in many low-rated tournaments, sometimes kicking outright horror there and at times even winning such games.

The squad has been playing together for a long time, the only change before the start of the DPC league the new season was the arrival of the only Filipino, Raging Potato, who has experience of playing in several TIs and has mainly played for Execration and Neon in the last few years. What awaits the team in this league is difficult to say, as it is their first appearance in the Asian elite, but the team should not become the whipping boys.

The bookmakers do not believe in the success of the BOOM Esports team in this clash, but their play in the first two weeks of the DPC league shows that they are in very good shape. I suggest you take a chance and bet on them to win for 2.40.

It is hard to imagine these teams facing each other without three maps, so Total Over 2.5 maps for 2.10 is a good option.

The correct score is 2-1 in favour of BOOM Esports; the odds are 3.22.