May 10 will begin Parimatch League Season 3 by Dota 2. Eight teams, including the champions of the first seasons – Virtus.pro and FlyToMoon – they will play $ 100 thousand. Cybersport.ru will tell who are the main contenders for the victory, and for whom saving the slot in the next season will already be a success.
Virtus.pro has a competitor in the region
After success at ESL One Los Angeles 2023 – Online Championship, Virtus.pro players seemed to relax. Often, victories against a knowingly weak opponent are given by VP with great difficulty, but what about the teams that claim to be leading roles in the region?
One of these compounds is Hellraisers. The team was swinging for a long time after the next replacements, but after a few months it reached its peak and is already a threat to any team from the CIS, including Virtus.pro. After the new year, HR and VP met eight times, and half of these matches ended in a victory for the team Alexandra Nix Levin.
Captain HellRaisers Yaroslav Miposhka Naydenov | Photo: EPICENTER
In the group stage of the previous season, Parimatch League HellRaisers took second place in the standings – they lost Virtus.pro by points, but won one match more. The results at the distance show that the roster is progressing, and if it continues in the same vein, then in the third season the Parimatch League will definitely be among the contenders for the championship title.
However, Virtus.pro is still itself, and the last victory in the full-time confrontation with HellRaisers (the match was in the playoffs WePlay! Pushka League Season 1 Division 1) remained behind her. Despite increased competition in the region, VP is a team that, at a distance, shows the best results among teams from the CIS. Team Alexey Solo Berezin may lose individual fights, especially in the group stage, but is going to the most important matches.
Despite several defeats after ESL, Virtus.pro is still among the favorites of the Parimatch League | Photo: WePlay Press Service!
Last season, Virtus.pro misfired in the final – after winning two maps, she lost three in a row FlyToMoon. But the replacement Zaura Cooman Shakhmurzaev on the Igor iLTW Filatov already bore fruit at the next ESL event, where VP beat not only the CIS teams, but also the leaders of the European region.
Troublemakers
The CIS is the second region after China in terms of the number of players in Dota 2, and therefore it has quite talented and capable teams. But in order to fight at a distance with the leaders of the region, they lack stability. However, if such teams catch their wave and find the key to the opponent, then they are quite capable of exerting the strongest CIS teams, taking away their points or even the championship title.
First of all, we are talking about FlyToMoon. Like the HellRaisers team Ilya ALOHADANCE Korobkina already repeatedly proved this season that she is able to defeat Virtus.pro in a full-time meeting. She punished VP for being relaxed in the finale. Parimatch Dota 2 League Season 2 and won the trophy after a lag with a score of 0: 2 on the cards. The team has good time-tested performers, a smart approach to drafts, but it does not work out a long series of victories – after success in matches with nominal favorites, defeats from teams that on paper are inferior to FTM in the class often follow. And only this factor does not allow to include FlyToMoon among the favorites along with HellRaisers and Virtus.pro.
FlyToMoon already showed that they know the recipe for victory over favorites | Photo: WESG
To the list of teams that, under a certain set of circumstances, also in theory claims to be the championship, can be attributed Team unique. The team cannot boast of the same statistics against leading CIS squads as FlyToMoon, but it has a different advantage compared to the teams, which we will discuss below – solid experience of playing in tournaments. So far, they do not have a regular player in fourth position, and if Unique finds a suitable artist for this role, then at least going to the playoffs for them will not be a problem.
With the current composition of the participants, getting into the top 4 of the group stage should be a minimum program, and already in the double-elimination grid, if you are in the right mood, you can count on any result. But in order to compete for the victory in the championship, Unique will still have to exert extra effort.
Is it realistic to jump above your head?
Initially, the list of participants was supposed to be VP.Prodigy, but to avoid a conflict of interest, the organizers of the third season allowed only one Virtus.pro roster to speak. Youth roster VP replaced Team Empire Hope – a team that could not go through the butt round, having been defeated by Team Unique and Khan. She actually got a slot in the third season by accident, and she can’t expect any performance out of this team. It will be very difficult for her to fight not only with Virtus.pro and HellRaisers, but also with other leaders. And to keep a place in the league will be the main task for Hope.
Ecnart of Team Empire Hope | Photo: WESG
Empire will have three opponents for maintaining a registration in the Parimatch League – Winstrike teamKhan and FlyToMoon 2.0. Winstrike retained the slot, getting into the top 4 of the previous season, and the rest surpassed Team Empire Home in the joint tournament. However, if you look at the face-to-face meetings of all outsiders of the Parimatch League, then there is no clear statistics on the strength of a particular team. Everyone defeated everyone in matches at other online tournaments, and all these rosters do not differ in any pronounced stability. At the same time, Winstrike even took away points from Team Unique, but before that she had a series of five defeats.
For Khan and FlyToMoon 2.0, the situation is not much different – both teams play in tournaments of not the highest level, and even there they often lose to rather weak opponents. For them, the chances of a third-season championship trophy for the Parimatch League seem illusory, but anyone can enter the top 6 and gain experience in the fight against the leaders of the region.
The first meeting of Parimatch League Season 3 will be held on May 10, its start is scheduled for 16:00 Moscow time. Participants in the fight will be FlyToMoon 2.0 and Khan. Parimatch accepts bets on all matches of the tournament. After registration First rate insurance for up to 2 thousand rubles will be available.
