Evil Geniuses Signs iceiceice

For the first time since I’ve seen him play Dota 2, iceiceice has joined a North American team. This is a player you probably know a lot about, simply because he’s been around from day 1. His career goes back to 2005, 6 years before Dota 2 came around. So as you might imagine, we’re talking about a tier 1 competitor with numerous accomplishments and a lot of former teams. I’ll make a quick summary for you. But first, let’s take a brief look at Evil Geniuses.

EG’s Situation

Given EG’s past, I’m actually shocked by their lack of interest in Dota these days. Or maybe not Dota. Just competing. In 2020, Fly and his squad won 5 regional tournaments. But over the last 4 months, they simply stopped playing professionally. And not because there weren’t any events. Quite the contrary: there have been a lot of them. But I guess they don’t like to compete for small amounts of money. Given that these tournaments offer around $25,000 for first prize, which is $5,000 per person minus a lot of other stuff, I can imagine why the former TI champions aren’t interested.

But now, with this roster change, I guess they’ll want to start competing again asap. RAMZES has clearly left the team for good, even though he’s still inactive, and his year with EG was underwhelming. Of course, it’s not really his fault. This ongoing global crisis has changed a lot of things and made it really difficult for him to compete. But still, just two Grand Finals in one year is not good at all for a player who used to win Major after Major.

The History of iceiceice

iceiceice has a lot of good results. Still, he’s never won The International. He participated many times in it and even finished 4^th in 2014 and 2015. Apart from that, he won some big events back in 2014, when Vici Gaming was a formidable competitor: i-League Season 1, The Summit 2, and StarLadder StarSeries Season 9.

In total, he’s played Dota 2 for 10 teams. Evil Geniuses is his 10^th organization. So not only did he moved from team to team. He picked a different team each time. Which is quite rare for a player of his caliber. Usually, top players frequently revisit former clubs, especially in China and Southeast Asia. Just look at Jabz from Fnatic. He either got kicked or asked to leave (we don’t really know) and then, after Fnatic became a complete ruin, he was asked to return. And it only took one month.

In iceiceice’s case, he seems to enjoy playing for a team for 1-2 years. That’s his standard contract duration. And then he goes somewhere else. Of course, this is also a consequence of not always getting the results he or the club desires. But Evil Geniuses seems to be ok with that. And since he was a free agent when they signed him, he probably didn’t even cost that much.

One thing to consider about iceiceice is his age. He’s now 30 years old and probably has a few more years of professional Dota. Hopefully, he can find success with EG, given that they’re a great team. But I don’t know when the global crisis will end. It may take another year. And if that happens, that means we won’t have the 10^th TI anytime soon.

 

Photo credit: Valve