Shopify Rebellion will begin their journey at DreamLeague Season 19 with a stand-in.

DreamLeague Season 19, which marks the debut of ESL Pro Tour is set to begin tomorrow, April 9, with Shopify Rebellion opening the event at 13:00 EEST. However, the NA top team won’t have their mid laner with them for at least a few matches. The top teams from all six major regions have received an invite to DreamLeague S19 and all of them are required to bootcamp in Europe in order to compete.But visa issues give some of the participants a hard time.

While PSG.LGD won’t be able to compete at all, Shopify Rebellion will be using an up and coming mid laner until Abed "Abed" Yusop visa process will be done.

Kasra "Mikey" Mesbah has little competitive experience, his most recent ventures being with the Iranian team, Winter Bear in the previous DPC season. Also, at the end of 2022, he got to stand in for Entity at BetBoom Xmas Show.

Despite not playing with a high profile team yet, Mikey is definitely on many people’s radar and standing in now for Shopify Rebellion might become his true launching pad. The young mid laner became rather popular in the high ranked MMR pubs after he climbed from 11K to 12K MMR in just 15 days.

Mikey’s most popular heroes are Puck, Huskar, Batrider and Invoker. However, in the past week, he seems to have practiced Storm Spirit the most in pubs, leaving Invoker to rest.

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It remains to be seen if he will try to emulate Abed’s hero pool as much as possible at DreamLeague Season 19 or if he will be able to bring his own flavour at Shopify Rebellion. The event starts tomorrow, April 9 and will run through the next two weeks with a slightly different format than the Dota 2 fans are used to.

DreamLeague Season 19 format

Group Stage 1: April 9 - 12

Two groups of eight teams each
Single round-robin
All matches are Bo2
Top four teams from each group advance to group stage 2
Remaining teams are eliminated

Group Stage 2: April 14 - 20

One group of eight teams
Single round-robin
All matches are Bo3
Top two teams advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs
3rd and 4th place team advance to the lower bracket of the playoffs
Remaining teams are eliminated

Playoffs: April 22 - 23

Double-elimination bracket
All matches except Grand Final are Bo3
Grand Final is Bo5

Abed to miss the start of ESL Pro Tour - DreamLeague Season 19