Team Secret are just two steps away from TI11

The Last Chance Qualifier is about to enter its final two days and the most important battles will take place in the upper bracket semifinals. Four teams, including Team Secret, are just two steps away from securing a spot at The International 11.

So far, all of them have had decent runs, with few or no defeats and plenty of good games that demonstrated high competence on their part.

T1 – Team Secret

For Team Secret, this will be their third terrifying opponent at this tournament. Clement “Puppey” Ivanov has already encountered Natus Vincere (1-1) and Xtreme Gaming (2-1) but T1 will be a completely different ball game.

This opponent is wildly creative and can win with the most ridiculous drafts. You never know what Anathan “ana” Pham is going to pick and even when T1 draft one of his signature heroes, Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen might claim it for himself.

The main weakness of T1 is that they love their standard strategies so much that they prefer to pick a small number of heroes if possible. This might allow Puppey to prepare some clever traps or perhaps his specialty: pocket strats, also known as cheese.

With so much on the line, there’s absolutely no incentive for the teams to hide their best strategies until The International 11, so we’re likely going to see them using everything they know to get the job done.

Going into this match, Secret are easily the favorite. But they’ll almost certainly need three games to win.

The winner of the match will then get two shots at qualifying for The International. One in the upper bracket Final and one in the lower bracket Final.

Virtus.pro – Team Liquid

This will be the second semifinal of the Last Chance Qualifier and Virtus.pro have almost no chance of winning it. Based on the two teams’ performance during the group stage and the quarterfinals, Liquid have a high chance of winning.

This match will be the second battle between these two competitors at the Last Chance Qualifier. They’ve already played once in the group stage and Liquid won with ease, despite the best-of-two format. Game 1 lasted just 25 minutes and game 2 ended after 30. In Dota 2, that’s a clear indication of a one-sided match.

Apart from having two of the world’s best players on their roster (Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen and Ludwig “zai” Wahlberg), Liquid have the advantage of being a lot more versatile than their opponents. If they choose to ban VP’s best heroes and just rely on their versatility, they will definitely win this match.

Header: Team Secret