Ex-OG Player Taiga’s Match Fixing Situation Summarized

YouTuber Morfdesigner released a 30-minute video titled “322 GURU: Match fixing from a World Champion in Dota 2,” exposing and explaining Taiga’s actions related to match-fixing while still representing the OG jersey.

Near the end of 2023, Taiga had already made an official statement on his Twitter account, opening up about his gambling addiction that occurred after Ti11. He mentioned he had lost all his tournament winnings from playing Dota 2 and admitted to betting on esports games and sports. However, he hid that he was betting on Dota 2 matches, especially those he was playing in.

Getting Into Contact With A Match Fixer

In March 2023, Taiga played a pub match with a known “match-fixer” and “322 player,” Sensibility. During the game, the two players conversed, and surprisingly, the Norwegian was the one initiating the invitation to talk on Discord.

There, a pair between the two was made. Sensibility gave Taiga access to betting accounts and lent him money to gamble with. However, Sensibility was shocked to see that Taiga was constantly placing bets on Counter-Strike matches with his money and losing. As a result, Taiga fell into debt from gambling with Sensibility’s money.

Falling Into Debt

Now, owing Sensibility money, Taiga had the bright idea of betting on professional Dota 2 matches using his insider knowledge to make money and repay his debt. This knowledge included how other teams were doing in scrims. In the video, Taiga mentioned OG was demolishing Entity during their scrims, even though it is prohibited to leak information from scrims.

However, Sensibility and the mafia crew wanted to bet on OG’s matches at DreamLeague Season 2019 (April 2023). This is because “322 matches” take weeks to prepare, and these matches in Tier 3 tournaments have low betting site limits, so there isn’t too much money to be made. On the other hand, Tier 1 matches like DreamLeague have high limits because match-fixing in such a tournament is highly uncommon.

Taiga wasn’t a fan of having to throw his own matches, so Sensibility offered to bet on first blood during OG matches. Taiga was fond of this idea, mentioning he could convince his team to pick aggressive heroes and play for first blood. Both were set on the idea, but Sensibility forced Taiga to share his screen on Discord while in the game to bypass the 5-minute delay on the main stream.

Money Printing Time?

The plan was working. OG and Taiga were constantly getting first bloods, meaning Taiga was not betting against himself and did not have to play his own game. Taiga proceeded to make calls for himself, telling Sensibility to bet on over/under kills. Soon, these bets were being shared with the mafia boss, and their operations were scaling, meaning Taiga would get a larger share.

Things start to get bad here. In OG’s match against Nouns, Taiga knew Nouns often smoked aggressively to get first blood. He told Sensibility to go all in betting on Nouns getting first blood. If they did not connect their smoke gank, Taiga would purposely feed first blood. Fortunately, it worked, as OG’s Chu got caught and died. During these matches, Taiga messaged Sensibility on Telegram while playing the game, celebrating their betting win.

Sensibility is happy, Taiga is happy, and the mafia is happy. With so much success, the mafia wanted Taiga to throw more first bloods. However, he did not want to feed himself as first blood anymore, so they were mainly betting on totals.

When Things Went South

One day, Taiga woke up and felt he needed money. He told Sensibility to bet high amounts, suggesting $10,000. Sensibility asked if Taiga could repay the money in case of a failure, and Taiga replied he would feed first blood if they lost.

As a result, the mafia placed many bets on OG getting first blood, but their opponents were Team Spirit, who studied OG’s recent replays understanding their tendency for aggressively taking first blood. Miposhka and company prepared a counter-strat, and Team Spirit got first blood, meaning Taiga and his friends had lost massive amounts of money.

To recoup the losses, Taiga fed first blood against beastcoast. He ran into the enemy jungle with no vision alone, but the enemy players were not there to catch him. Instead, he made “foolish” mistakes in the lane when he could have escaped and used Faerie Fire to survive. Ultimately, Taiga fed first blood, and the losses were covered.

The crew continued to bet on first blood and found massive success. Their record was 25 wins to 3 losses. Taiga received a share of over $20,000 to $35,000 from these matches.

Taiga No Longer Wants In

The OG team was through to the second stage, where the limits became even higher. The mafia wanted to make more money with Taiga. However, this tournament was important because it is essentially the qualifier for the Riyadh Masters, and we all know how much money is being distributed there. Qualifying for Riyadh will make Taiga much more money than he would make from match-fixing.

Taiga no longer wanted to associate himself with Sensibility and the mafia. However, being in such a position, Sensibility threatened to blackmail Taiga if he didn’t cooperate. So, the pair continued to attempt to make money together.

The next big tournament was the Berlin Major. It would be challenging to match fix during a LAN tournament, let alone a Major. There weren’t too many details during the Berlin tournament, but Morf mentioned that Taiga would go to the bathroom and tell Sensibility to place bets.

At the Berlin Major, OG finished at a respective 5-6th place but only received $25,000 in prize money, meaning he would get less than 20% of the share. Taiga was making significantly more money match-fixing for a week with Sensibility, at least 5 times the amount.

What Happens After?

Soon after, rumors surrounding Taiga’s betting started to spread, and OG hired private investigators to check. Taiga then took a break from competitive Dota due to “mental health issues,” but there is a high possibility it was a cover-up.

After playing in OG, Taiga joined Wildcard Gaming and BLEED, where he achieved little to no results. He had also blocked Sensibility from all social media, but Sensibility thinks he was working with another mafia group. During his stints in these teams, Taiga was losing to no-named teams, especially while in BLEED.

As a result, Sensibility leaked all the chat logs and provided video evidence to Morf, hoping to expose Taiga, which is where we got this information from.

OG’s Official Response To The Situation

Official OG statement regarding new evidence on Taiga’s actions. pic.twitter.com/zVwTVzBcQX

— OG (@OGesports) April 5, 2024

The OG organization initially had no idea this was happening, but quickly started to catch on. They hired a private investigator to search for clues and evidence. The team did the right thing and benched Taiga, but had to bring him back due to replacement clauses that could get them disqualified from the DPC season.

Community Reactions

The community was obviously saddened to hear that Taiga would fall into these depths. The Norwegian was one of the most mechanically gifted support players who made a name for himself playing complex heroes such as Rubick and Earth Spirit.

It’s truly mind-boggling to witness the fall from grace of a player like Taiga, once rank 1 EU and one of the most talented individuals in the entire scene => later MAJOR winner => throw games for random Russian players.

— MiLAN (@milandota2) April 5, 2024

He also seemed like an incredibly down-to-earth and nice guy. Many Dota 2 personalities are devastated that such a talented player like Taiga would commit these scandals.

I watched a video about Taiga. There’s no forgiveness for 322 – that’s my opinion. But at the same time, I feel sorry for Taiga because he’s a gambler, meaning he’ll do anything to win back what he’s lost. I hope OG won’t have any trouble because of this.

— Dzmitry (@FishmanDota2) April 5, 2024

It is also rather amusing to see how naïve Taiga was to match fix at such a large scale, especially in Tier 1 tournaments while representing such a prestigious organizaton like OG.

this Taiga matchfixing video is rough
bro what the f were you thinking ☠️

— Maurice Gutmann (@KheZu) April 5, 2024

Header: Taiga Instagram