Dota Pro Circuit Summer Tour is well underway, with the teams competing this season in both Division 1 and 2 entering the fourth week of matches.
For those fighting in Division 1, the stakes are pretty high this season. The Summer Tour will culminate with the PGL Arlington Major, which is basically the last chance at grabbing precious DPC points that count for a direct invite to The International 11.
Team Secret, one of the favourites in the Western European Division1, started the season quite rough, with a loss to OG. Immediately after the opening series, they needed to find a last-minute stand-in for Yazied "YapzOr" Jaradat, who hasn’t played with the team since then due to not feeling well. While no updates regarding him came from Secret through the three weeks of absence, Baqyt "Zayac" Emiljanov has been joining the lobbies with the team.
It took Team Secret and Zayac more than a few matches to find the groove together and that led to three lost series and a dangerous second to last place in Division 1, just one win ahead of Alliance, who is rock bottom with zero victories and four losses.
Western Europe is one of the regions with the most slots up for grabs for the Major, four. Even so, the 1-3 score wasn’t something Team Secret or any other team would feel comfortable with at the halfway point in the season.
Week four in the six-week league schedule kicked off for Secret with a must-win matchup against Team Liquid, who before the game started were tied with OG, Tundra Esports and Entity for the first place in the league with three wins and one loss.
Team Secret![]()
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Team Liquid
Team LiquidTeam Liquid had a perfect start in both of the games of the bo3 series held against Secret. They dominated the laning stage both times, but lost momentum past the 15 minute mark, when both Secret drafts were starting to shine. Game one slipped through the fingers for Liquid when Team Secret started to show the potential of their global map presence with a position 5 Io and with the initiation power provided by position 4 Clockwerk.
Liquid had a carry Nature’s Prophet, but the constant pressure and the team fights forced by Secret didn’t give room for any split push shenanigans and game one victory went to the latter. More of the same happened in game two as well, Liquid going for an objective oriented draft with Troll Warlord and Tiny, but failing to make the transition from an early laning stage advantage.
Today’s victory brings Team Secret back in the race for a spot at the last Major of the year, PGL Arlington, while not much has been lost yet by Liquid, who are still in the top half of the Division with three wins and two losses and two more series on the schedule.
Unfortunately, for one team the situation looks extremely grim already.
Alliance, who promoted to Division 1 at the end of the Spring Tour, hasn’t been able to land a single game victory. They are now sitting at the very bottom of the league with a 0-4 series score and from now on they need to win, ideally, all their next three series to hope that they will avoid dropping back to Division 2. Their latest defeat came at the hands of goonsquad, which is mainly made of former Alliance players who left the team after placing just 9th-12th at TI10.
With today’s victory over their former team, the boys from goonsquad are above Team Secret in the intermediate standings with 2 wins and 2 losses and are very much in the battle for a spot at the Major.
Alliance, on the other hand, will fight the next few series to avoid relegation and the next team that will be playing against them is Gaimin Gladiators, on the 2nd of July at 18:00 CEST.
