Solo

Alexey "Solo" Berezin is a professional Dota 2 player. On June 16th, 2013, Solo received a lifetime ban from StarLadder for betting fraud against zRage. On the 21st, Solo was officially removed from RoX after admitting his involvement. Later, the ban was commuted to one year. The amount that Solo won from betting against his own team was $322, although he never received the money. Since then, Dota commentators and viewers frequently use the phrase "322" to mock particularly bad plays, implying that it almost appears that the player in question is attempting to throw the game. He was playing on Rox.KIS for the first half of 2014 and after unsuccessful attempt dropped in TI4 qualifiers. The Rox squad disbanded and after TI4 Solo joined Team Empire. He has won the Excellent Moscow Cup and left the team in December 2014. In 2015 Solo turned up with his new team XX5 Gaming but this team had no great achievements and disbanded in a couple of months later. Later he joined Vega Squadron. Having won Hitbox EU Championship #2, Yard G2A Fest Ep.1 and Mountain Trail Challenge the team secured a slot in TI5 European Qualifiers. Vega achieved a Wild-Card slot in the qualifiers. At The International, they lost to CDEC 1-2, won Team Archon 2-0 and lost to MVP Phoenix 2-1 and did not go further the tournament. Despite the fact that the team failed at TI, it didn't disband. Vega won ESL One New York European Qualifier then won ESL One New York 2015 by beating EG, IG and Team Secret. The victory let Vega participate at The Frankfurt Major 2015 where they finished 9-12. Vega couldn't participate in Shanghai and Manila Majors and failed in TI6 qualifiers. Later, in August, Virtus.Pro announced their new Dota 2 squad with XBOCT, God, Noone, Lil, and Solo. The final roster was Ramzes666, Noone, 9pasha, Lil, Solo. In October the team received an invitation to The Boston Major 2016 Europe Qualifier and managed to qualify for The Boston Major 2016. They placed 5th-8th after a 2-0 loss to Evil Geniuses. After a dominant performance in the Kiev Major 2017 CIS Qualifier in March of 2017, Virtus.Pro went on to place 2nd at the main event. They put up an excellent performance but fell in 5 games to the 4-time Valve Major champions, OG. Their set against OG was documented in Valve's True Sight documentary. The documentary was criticized by many to misrepresent the team dynamic of Virtus.Pro as chaotic and even hostile. Despite this, Virtus.Pro stayed with the same roster as The International 2017 season began. After the Kiev Major, Solo's drafting was criticized as being very one-dimensional. Solo and his team set out to prove that notion wrong at the DotA Summit 7, where they drafted 81 of the 112 available heroes in 17 games. The team had 16 drafts with entirely unique heroes, but Solo re-picked heroes in game 5 of the Grand Finals to ensure a victory over Team Secret and a first-place finish at a Premiere tournament, securing them a direct invite to The International 2017. At The International 2017, Virtus.Pro put up a strong performance in Group 2, finishing 3rd with a record of 10-6 behind the eventual 2nd and 3rd place teams Newbee and LGD.Forever Young. They were placed in the upper bracket where they beat LGD Gaming 2-0 and then fell to the lower bracket after losing to LGD.Forever Young 2-1. In the lower bracket, Virtus.Pro fell to Team Liquid, the eventual champions, 2-1 after a brutal 103-minute loss in game 1. The team finished 5th-6th. The team's next event was ESL One Hamburg 2017. After finishing at the top of their group over world champions Team Liquid, Virtus.Pro defeated Newbee 2-1 and then Team Secret 2-0 in the grand finals to win the first Major of the season. Virtus Pro's performance was absolutely dominant at the event, and the analysts stated regularly that VP had taken draft wins before the game had started due to Solo's captaining. The tournament was defined primarily of greedy dual-support duos that left teams lacking a true position 5. Despite this, Solo played a very selfless position-5 support on heroes like Bane and his signature Ogre Magi. Due to his captaining and support play Solo was awarded the Mercedes Benz MVP, winning $50,000 to put towards a Mercedes Benz car.