Kaipi to Compete in Americas Open Qualifier for Boston Major
Following Prodota Gaming’s success at the first North American Open Qualifier for the Boston Major, another European team is making the jump across the pond to compete in a less competitive environment.
Team Kaipi, made up of Cloud 9 alumni Pittner “b0ne7” Armand and WehSing “SingSing” Yuen, and rounded out by Brian “FLUFFNSTUFF” Lee, Alaan “SexyBamboe” Faraj and Neta “TheCoon” Shapira, have registered for the second North American Open qualifier for the Boston Major despite playing out of Europe, according to a report by DotaBlast’s Andra Ciubotaru.
Prodota Gaming, another European team, won the first NA Open qualifier by defeating Veggie eSports, 2-0. Prodota Gaming played on NA times and on a 150 ping to win the “softer” field.
In their interview on Dotablast, b0ne7 said that the decision to play in NA was due to having fewer teams and better odds to get into the regional qualifiers.
“For the second round, we have decided to ‘jump ship’ and try our hand in the Americas region. The precedent has already been set, there are fewer teams, so the odds seem better,” b0ne7 told Dotablast. “We are fully aware of the fact that other European teams are going to do the same thing, but we’ll take the risk and hope for the best. Chances are, we’re going to see two European teams in the Americas closed qualifiers – two European/CIS teams might even qualify for the Major from the Americas region.”
““We could have registered for the Americas from the very beginning, we knew it wasn’t against the rules. We tried to make it in the European Open Qualifiers. It didn’t work out – we have only ourselves to blame,” he said.
In an earlier interview, Prodota Gaming told Dotablast that the imbalance between the number of teams from NA and the EU/CIS region is clearly influencing the less than ideal moves for smaller teams.
“There’s a clear imbalance between the Europe and CIS region and the Americas one. We have too many teams in one region and not enough to fill the other. Yet, they get the same number of spots every time. We have decided to take our chances in the Americas open qualifiers,” said Prodota Gaming.
“‘Open’ means ‘open’ and nowhere is it clearly specified that changing regions is against the rules.”
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