Gaimin Gladiators fall as multiple Dota 2 underdogs make a stand at TI 2023

With the group stage completed, only 16 teams remain at The International 2023. But removing some of the weaker teams only led to stronger competition as multiple top seeds, including the arguable tournament favorites in Gaimin Gladiators, have already fallen as players fight for playoff seeding. 

While it was the final series of the day, Talon Esports’ 2-1 upset over Gaimin has the biggest implications for the rest of TI12 out of phase two’s opening lineup. 

An early win in game one saw Gaimin looking to clean things up quickly, but Talon kept their composure and managed to pull out an hour-long comeback in game two after clutching up in the final 10 minutes. A double kill on dyrachyo’s Phantom Assassin left Gaimin short-handed in their high-ground defense, opening things up for Talon to walk in and click down the throne to even things up.

Game three was equally as close for the opening 30 minutes, with Gaimin slowly building up a lead on the back of Ace’s Spirit Breaker. But Mikoto was able to jump in and steal an Aegis at the 28-minute mark, swinging things in Talon’s favor and allowing 23savage to take over with his Morphling.

It was a quieter series from Mikoto in the lead-up to the team fight at Rosh, but a perfectly timed blink from the Tiny player and a Toss into the air meant he secured Rosh and Aegis for Talon. Dyrachyo was forced to leap out and pop his BKB but couldn’t properly reengage as Talon spread out, picking Gaimin apart one by one.

With the win, Talon upset Gaimin and will begin the playoffs in the upper bracket. On the flip side, Gaimin, who many expected to be the TI12 favorites after a dominant regular season, now sits just one series loss away from being eliminated from the event.

That wasn’t the only upset from the first day of playoff seeding matches either, as TSM was crushed by a Virtus.pro team that appears to be picking up steam. 

VP pulled out a 55-minute game one reversal thanks largely in part to a monster showing from Ilya “Kiritych” Ulyanov’s Chaos Knight going head-to-head against Bryle’s Invoker. The CIS squad cleaned up some of its game-one mistakes on the second map and handed TSM a swift ticket to the lower bracket in a 38-kill route. 

“The first map, we just played terribly and in some instances, we were probably lucky to win,” VP captain fng said following the series conclusion. “I think a stronger team would have definitely crushed us if we had the same actions and outcomes fifteen minutes in. On the second map, the draft worked out easily for us and it seemed like we almost did everything really well except for a couple of minor issues.”

Now VP will match up against Spirit in the upper bracket’s first round, which fng says “it’s possible” for the underdogs to win despite having never beaten the top CIS squad this season.

Speaking of Spirit, the undefeated champions of the group stage had some trouble with Shopify Rebellion early on but quickly managed to reign things in and come back from a 13-0 deficit in game one. Game two was a bloodbath for both sides, but Shopify couldn’t pull away, leading to Spirit taking the lead and slowly closing out North America’s hope at an upper-bracket run with a Larl rampage. 

“The enemies fucked us up a bit in the beginning of both maps, especially the first map, but we came back,” Spirit’s Yatoro said following the win. “We threw the game a bit on the second map but we won. Overall we played a little bit better, and we’re happy with the result.”

Meanwhile, Team Liquid paced themselves and efficiently tore Evil Geniuses apart in a 2-0 win. Neither game was particularly close and they look ready to take on Talon in the main event’s opening round. 

Tomorrow will be the final day of phase two, with four additional series deciding the playoff seeding for the main event, which begins on Oct. 20. LG Gaming will kick things off against Keyd Stars at 12pm CT.