Rock, paper, scissors: Dota 2 WEU tiebreaker ends in 3-way deadlock

If this year’s Dota 2 Winter Tour hasn’t been exciting enough for you, the highlights just keep on coming. Now that we are in the final stages of the Winter Tour of the 2023 DPC, the standings are set in stone—well, almost. There have been teams who have acquired the same win-loss record as other teams in their region, resulting in best-of-one tiebreaker matches to decide the final standings.

While there have been some controversial decisions made in the SA region, the WEU standings told a different story. Team Liquid are the undisputed first-place winner in the standings with a perfect 7-0 record, followed closely by Gaimin Gladiators’ strong showing propelling them to second place with their 5-2 record. What comes next are the rest of the top teams in the region stuck in a deadlock.

OG Esports, Tundra Esports, and Team Entity have all acquired a record of 4-3, tying them for third place with nowhere to go but up, at least for the winners of the tiebreaker matches. What happened next is something that most players and viewers did not predict.

The first round of tiebreakers ended up in a deadlock, with each team defeating the other to maintain their standing in the brackets. To alleviate this problem, another round of tiebreakers took place soon after. The first match was between OG and Tundra with a relatively normal draft until Sneyking’s position five Sven pick probably caught OG off-guard. This may or may not have affected their playstyle going forward because OG dropped the tiebreaker match to Tundra.

Next came the match between Tundra and Entity. This draft was more traditional than the last match and Tundra ended up playing another game against a mid Batrider. The game, however, didn’t go as well as their previous match did, with Stormstormer’s Batrider dominating all over the map. His Batrider and watson’s Drow Ranger both had a perfect game with zero deaths, leading to Entity’s victory over the reigning TI champions.

The final match took place between Entity and OG. With this being the deciding match of the standings, both teams had everything to lose and they fought their hardest to gain victory. Stormstormer’s Death Prophet and watson’s Slark were being effectively controlled by Misha’s Omniknight and his Guardian Angel. Eventually, bzm’s Leshrac and Yuragi’s Drow Ranger became too difficult to shut down and OG ended up taking the final tiebreaker victory.

The end result is yet another three-way deadlock between three of the best WEU teams in the game currently. How this progresses further is yet to be seen, but what we are sure of is that we will be treated to some of the best Dota games in this DPC.