Reigning champion humbled by NA Dota 2 underdog as TI 2023 playoffs take shape

The upsets continue to define the early stages of The International 2023 as three more upper seeds fall to the lower bracket ahead of the playoffs on Oct. 20. North American underdog nouns made the biggest splash to close out the seeding stage, completing a relatively clean sweep of the reigning TI Champion, Tundra Esports. 

Tundra selected nouns as their opponent for the playoff seeding phase of TI12 and paid the price as the unconventional team styled all over the WEU squad. Whether it was K1 leading the charge or Gunnar coming in with some wild plays on both Earth Shaker and Ogre Magi, nouns looked like the better team in both games. 

Game one was close for about 20 minutes before nouns began pulling away, but game two was a slow-roll victory for the NA team as they knocked the TI11 champ into the lower bracket and locked up a top-12 finish at this year’s event after slipping in through regional qualifiers. As Reddit user Independent_Form_349 put it, “nouns really said its Ogre time and Ogred all over Tundra’s face.”

That wasn’t the only upset on the day, though it was the most surprising because, while LGD Gaming took care of business with a 2-0 win over Keyd Stars, the remaining series were some of the closest in terms of overall skill. 

BetBoom and 9Pandas are very familiar with each other and their series showed that from the draft to the lanes, but Solo’s squad looked better in the final two games. So, even though game one saw multiple lead changes and BB’s core players running rampant, 9Pandas broke things open with kiyotaka’s Lina in game two—followed by a classic RAMZES performance in game three to win it all. 

Now BetBoom are sitting just one series away from elimination in the lower bracket while Solo and RAMZES pick up on an old TI tradition. This will be the fourth time the duo has made it to the upper bracket of the TI playoffs together and the fourth-straight time they have run into LGD Gaming as their opponent—where they have gone 1-2 against varying iterations of the Chinese squad. 

The final upset was also the least surprising, with Azure Ray sweeping Entity in the final series of the seeding stage. AR controlled game one for almost a full 50 minutes but played patiently to break through Entity’s defense, something that took them very little time in game two despite Entity nearly making a late comeback. 

Now we wait until Oct. 20 for the playoffs to begin and Western Europe is currently in shambles despite entering the tournament as the most dominant region. 

Of the four WEU teams that made the cut into the playoffs, only Team Liquid are in the upper bracket—leaving two of the other tournament favorites, Tundra and Gaimin Gladiators with a long road to contention. Meanwhile, three Eastern European teams made the cut and China’s two reps look poised for a strong showing

South America is the only region without a single team in the upper bracket, leaving the region in serious danger of being the first entirely eliminated from TI12 as Evil Geniuses stare down Gaimin and KStars will play BetBoom.