After waving goodbye to two more teams in the first part of Day 1 of the main event at The International 20203, the action moved to the upper bracket where four teams are fighting for a secured top 3 finish.
First to reach the upper bracket finals are Team Spirit, who for many of the Dota 2 fans, are the main favourites at claiming the Aegis of Champions this year.
vs
Team LiquidTeam Spirit started the series with a nearly perfect game from Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov, who despite being heavily targeted in the first phase of the draft, still found a beefy offlane hero to make the most use of the Heart-Blade Mail meta-itemization at TI12. Collapse had by far made the difference for team spirit in game one on Axe, setting up the tempo and almost always finding the right initiations to put his team in an advantageous position in team fights.
But as good as Collapse's game was in the opening match, it was a Liquid show moving into the next battle.
Game two featured a heavy mobile and elusive draft from Team Liquid who went for a Weaver-Pangolier-Spirit Breaker trio core to constantly pressure Team Spirit and haunt them down across the entire map and even up the series.
Weaver reigns supreme over Spectre in late game at TI12
Interestingly enough, despite Spectre, in the hands of Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk has lost the second game to Michael "miCKe" Vu’s carry Weaver, the two teams went for a hero swap in the deciding match. Yatoro ended up playing the Weaver and miCKe the Spectre, and the outcome was the same. Spectre lost to late game shenanigans from the elusive Weaver.
“I think I just have the best team ever,” said Yatoro at the end of what was a 53-minute back-and-forth battle that propelled Team Spirit to top 3 at The International 2023.
Team Spirit’s victory in the upper bracket semifinals ensures that TI12 won’t have the same grand finals as all the Majors of 2023. Instead, Team Liquid and Gamin Gladiators will battle on Saturday, October 28 with elimination on the line in the lower bracket quarterfinal opener of the second day in the main event.
