Moving to China to join Team Aster seemed to have been the right call for Sumail "SumaiL" Hassan, who has now qualified for his first major in four years.
Team Aster ended the second week of the Dota Pro Circuit Summer Tour with a clean 5-0 series score to secure a spot at Bali Major, the last major before The International 2023. Up to yesterday’s series, Aster were on an 8 games win streak, but their record got interrupted by Xtreme Gaming in the first game of the bo3 battle. XG brought heavy team-fight combos to successfully stop Aster’s dominance while also denying in the draft phase SumaiL’s signature hero, Storm Spirit.
However, Aster had full faith in their new mid laner and weren’t shy of first picking Storm in the next two games to reverse sweep Xtreme and secure the Bali Major ticket. SumaiL went 19-1-8 in game two and 18-1-17 in game three on his Storm, destroying Xtreme on his way to Bali.
This marks the first time SumaiL has qualified for a major tournament since EPICENTER 2019, which he attended as still a member of Evil Geniuses. For the past few years, although he didn’t secure a spot at a DPC major with either of his post-EG teams, he still got to play as a stand-in, with Team Liquid at WePlay AniMajor and more recently with Team Aster at ESL One Berlin Major.
Coming from Berlin with a top 8 finish while relying purely on in-game chat wheel phrases to coordinate with his team, SumaiL made the decision to leave Nigma Galaxy and move to China to fight for a spot at TI12 under the Team Aster banner.
Asked in one of the winner’s interviews what’s the difference between Aster and Nigma, SumaiL refused to comment.
Since his official arrival at Aster, SumaiL began taking Chinese lessons so by the time TI 2023 comes, in October, Aster might become one of the biggest contestants at the Aegis of Champions.
So far, only Team Liquid has already qualified for The International 2023 via DPC points. There are 11 more spots up for grabs and Team Aster need a first place finish in the Chinese regional league Division I in the current Summer Tour and a high placement at the upcoming Bali Major to make sure that they avoid regional qualifiers.
While they are currently 5-0 in the league, they are tied with PSG.LGD, who are also in for the Bali Major. The Summer Tour league season will close with the most anticipated battle in the Chinese region, PSG.LGD
vs
Team Aster, who will most likely duel for securing the first place in their division. A first place finish will bring with it 500 DPC points while the runners up will grab 300 points.
headline picture courtesy of Perfect World
