On Sunday, some of Europe’s finest players took the stage at DreamHack Winter 2018 in Jönköping, Sweden. And though top seed William “Leffen” Hjelte primarily used his secondary Falco during the tournament, the Team SoloMid-sponsored Swede still took first at the event, defeating Spanish Peach Álvaro “Trif” García Moral in a hard-fought grand finals.
Leffen’s path to victory was far from easy. Trif, who in February defeated Leffen’s secondary Marth to win Phoenix Blue, took the Swede to the brink this time as well, defeating his Falco with a decisive 3-0 in the first set of grand finals. To gain his berth in winner’s side of grand finals, Leffen went on a winner’s bracket run through Matthias “RedBlaze” Ohlsson, Jacob “Daydee” Stenberg, and Trif, who he defeated 3-1 in winner’s finals.
For his own run to winner’s finals, Trif defeated Andreas “Jadde” Henriksson before overcoming Christopher “Humpe” Falck, who had defeated Trif’s countryman, the Sheik main Roberto “Overtriforce” Iglesias, in order to make it into winner’s semifinals. To Overtriforce’s credit, the Spaniard made a prodigious loser’s bracket run, defeating Jadde, Daydee, and Niklas “Poppmaister6000” Hallgren (who defeated Humpe in the preceding round) to make it into loser’s finals, where he fell to Trif for a third-place finish.
Despite some upsets in the earlier stages of the bracket, DreamHack Winter’s top three went just as seeded; this tournament will most likely not have a drastic impact on the soon-to-be-published year-end rankings. Though Trif was able to score another win on Leffen, it was over the Swede’s Falco, not his main of Fox. But there’s still one more event left this season: Don’t Park On The Grass, going down in Washington in just under two weeks.
