Second Tour of the Dota Pro Circuit has entered the third week of competition today and the Southeast Asia regional league has already decided the first teams to secure tickets to the ESL One Berlin Major.
Two teams have secured so far a spot at the upcoming Major via SEA Division I league. Talon Esports, who have recently emerged as the strongest team in the region with their third place finish at the Lima Major, resumed the DPC run with a dazzling performance in the Spring Tour. They are the first team to claim a spot at the Berlin Major with a 5-0 series record so far and two more series to go in the league schedule.
A more surprising result comes from Team SMG who have finally managed to push themselves to the next level after a long trail of drama. Beginning last year, when they kept the headlines with a questionable roster change, SMG continued the road to The International 2022 on a self-destruction path.
After failing to secure a spot at TI11 via DPC Points, SMG made a final roster change ahead of the regional qualifiers for the biggest event of the year but forgot to lock in the roster. That led to their disqualification from the TI11 regional qualifiers and left Daryl "iceiceice" Koh on the outside at the first-ever TI held in his home country, Singapore.
A new DPC season came with a fresh start for SMG and a chance to set things right. They began this DPC season with another roster change by letting iceiceice pursue new options, but couldn’t secure a top 3 finish in the first Tour. Come Spring Tour, SMG tinkered with their line-up once more and welcomed onboard Wilson "poloson" Koh, who joined on loan from Invictus Gaming. With him pairing up with Lee "CDR" Jia He in the safe lane, SMG are 5-1 in the regional league and have just one more series to go.
Regardless of the result in the Bleed Esports
vs
Team SMG matchup from March 31, the former are locked in for the Berlin Major, along with Talon Esports.
The third and final ticket to Berlin for SEA region will be claimed later this week, so stay tuned and check our tournament HUB for more updates from the 2023 DPC Spring Tour.
