Enjoy watching Hearthstone players, casters react with horror at this three-turn lethal

A blowout, in the context of sports, is a completely one-sided victory: One team rolls in and just utterly demolishes the other. It happens, even at the most elite levels of sport—somebody has a particularly bad day, or maybe just a long run of really hard luck—and it happens in esports too.

One notable example of that happened last weekend in a Hearthstone Masters Tour Dalaran event between Eddie Lui and Facundo "Nalguidan" Pruzzo. The match was over almost before it began: It's not unusual for aggressive decks to achieve fast wins, and Eddie, according to his official profile, is "a known risk-taker." But it's definitely unusual to see lethal on board this fast—just three turns!

With all due respect to Eddie's skill, the dismantling was enabled by a virtually perfect draw for his Token Druid deck, enabling a buffed horde of Gibberlings that very few decks could overcome that early in the game. In Poker terms, it's a perfect nut draw for the Druid.

A blowout by any definition, then, but what makes it so thoroughly entertaining is that everyone involved seems to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation. Nalguidan knows there's nothing he can do but watch the carnage unfold, Eddie seems vaguely mortified by the whole thing, and even the casters are clearly appalled: Neil "L0rinda" Bond, on the right, shares some ironic post-match advice—"Win on turn two, and you're good"—while his partner, TJ Sanders, looks like he's just witnessed a murder. I suppose in a sense, he has. Have a good weekend folks, and always remember to believe in the heart of the cards.