OGA Dota PIT Season 3 Europe/CIS Preview

OGA Dota PIT Season 3 Europe/CIS is starting today and most of the best teams in these two regions are participating in it. It only lasts for 4 days, between September 23^rd – 26^th, but it has plenty of amazing matches and $170,000 in prizes, so I’m sure the action will be worth watching.

OGA Dota PIT Season 3 Europe/CIS Participants

OGA Dota PIT Season 3 Europe/CIS features 8 teams:

Team Secret
Team Nigma
OG
Alliance
Team Liquid
Prodigy
Natus Vincere
5men

Favorites

Among these teams, Team Secret is by far the strongest. If they don’t win the tournament, they should at least finish it in the Grand Final. In 2020, Puppey and his roster played in 8 Grand Finals of big events and won 7 of them. Furthermore, in the last 6 of them they won 6 times and they did it without losing a single game. In effect, they won 18 games out of 18, because these were all Bo5 matches. If that’s not total dominance, I don’t know what is. Secret is unbeatable at this point, unless they stop training for at least 3 weeks or some huge patch comes along and changes everything. In the current meta, Secret is light years ahead of everybody else.

Missing Players

No less than 3 teams will compete with one or more stand-ins. The first of them is Team Nigma. KuroKy is still recovering and rmN-, the team’s coach, will play in his place. The second one is VP.Prodigy. Lil and gpk will replace eine and fn. And the third is OG. It seems that Topson won’t be able to attend the tournament, so Sockshka will need to replace him as best he can.

Competitive Format

OGA Dota PIT Season 3 Europe/CIS takes place in a double-elimination format. Every match is Bo3, except for the Grand Final (Bo5).

Initial Matches

OGA Dota PIT Season 3 Europe/CIS will start with all of the teams in the Upper Bracket. These will be the first 4 matches:

Team Nigma versus Natus Vincere

This match is clearly Nigma favored. Even though it has to play without KuroKy, the fact that Nigma has already done that successfully and finished 3^rd in OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division is clear evidence that the roster is highly functional. Also, keep in mind that Nigma is the winner of the previous edition of OGA Dota PIT. This will also boost their confidence and probably their motivation to train hard ahead of the tournament.

VP.Prodigy versus Team Secret

This is an impossible mission for VP.Prodigy. Not only are they missing two players, they also need to beat an unbeatable opponent. I don’t think there’s any realistic chance for them to do that. 99% Secret wins this Bo3.

Team Liquid versus 5men

Team Liquid encountered 5men in the recent OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division. The score was 2 – 0 in their favor. Based on this fact, I expect them to get another win in this match. Overall, Liquid is a much stronger team than the newly created 5men.

OG versus Alliance

Normally, OG should have an easy match versus Alliance. But because they’re missing a key player, I actually think that Alliance will win.

Photo credit: Valve