Southeast Asia’s ESL One Birmingham online open qualifier brought quite interesting results. Ng “YamateH” Wei Poong won the right to participate in the closed qualifiers with two former Arrow Gaming members who were permanently banned from Valve tournaments, Yi Liong “ddz” Kok and Hsien Wan “Lance” Fua.
Once considered one of the best mid players in the world, ddz’s career came to an abrupt end when he was caught up in a match-fixing deal. Back in 2014, he was compared to Arteezy, when fans changed the meme 2EZ4RTZ to 2EZ4ddz to compliment ddz’s skills. He qualified for TI4 with Arrow Gaming, but the team almost failed to make it to the tournament due to visa problems. After four players were denied US visas because they were too young, Valve and Malaysia’s Ministry of Sports got together to help Arrow Gaming get visas. Arrow Gaming was eliminated in the group stage of TI4 and not long after the tournament, ddz and Lance were entangled in one of the biggest match-fixing scandals in Southeast Asia. Their professional career fell apart in October 2014 when they decided to bet on their team’s match and purposely ‘throw’ a game in the Synergy League.
The scandal lasted for months: the two players initially defended themselves and denied the allegations. ddz then posted on Reddit several screenshots to explain that his girlfriend and lance’s were the bettors and that the two players had no idea about this. Later, there was evidence that these screenshots were fake and both players said that their own managers were also involved and that he was the one who made up the story. As a result, Beyond The Summit decided to disqualify Arrow Gaming from The Summit 2. ddz and Lance were kicked out of Arrow Gaming, but later reunited with their Arrow Gaming teammates under the name Team Redemption to regain their honor.
However, their efforts were thwarted by the Dota 2 developer when Valve announced in March 2015 that the company would permanently ban the entire team from attending any future Valve events.
Five years later, three former Arrow Gaming/Team Redemption members are battling for a spot in the Southeast Asia region of the $40,000 ESL One Birmingham under the name Flower Gaming. The tournament is not part of Valve, and these players have never been banned by ESL One, so they have a chance to try their luck through the open qualifiers. Along with them, Chai “Mushi” Fee Fung and Khoo “Ohaiyo” Chongxin from Team CR, and Cheng “vtFαded” Jia Hao as carry, also made it to the closed qualifiers.
ESL One Birmingham’s online closed qualifier only had one ticket to the main event and CR made it to the semi-finals, while Flower Gaming was relegated to the losing bracket.
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