TI12: the first round of upper bracket results

The upper bracket of The International 12’s playoffs is proving to be even more exciting than we had hoped.

After the first round of matches, all of the favorites managed to advance to the semifinals. The two winners will be guaranteed a top three result at this tournament, which is amazing despite the relatively low prize pool.

Impressions

The prestige of winning The International brings excellent sponsorship deals and lots of new fans. For LGD Gaming, who lost their sponsor just before this tournament began, a victory here would be of tremendous importance. It would also be cathartic because of all the previous failures registered in recent years.

This team played in two TI Grand Finals and had five top 4 results in total. This has to hurt a lot. The 2021 edition, in particular, was a huge disappointment because they were the better team. In 2018, against OG, they could have won as well.

For the other three teams in the upper bracket, a victory would bring numerous benefits. In the case of Team Spirit and Team Liquid, both of them have already won the tournament once, so the dream of winning a new TI is of a different nature.

Top 6 secured 😎 #TI12

…means we have to wait another week for more Liquid games 😩 pic.twitter.com/rWYAOuiFXE

— Team Liquid Dota (@teamliquiddota) October 21, 2023

In Liquid’s case, the 2017 result is not particularly relevant to the present roster because they have nothing to do with the roster led by KuroKy six years ago.

For Spirit, given their victory at Riyadh Masters 2023 and DreamLeague S21, a victory here would simply confirm the fact that they were the best team in Dota 2 this year, despite Gaimin Gladiators’ numerous trophies. It would also make them the second team in the history of the game to win TI twice. So far, OG has been the only org to do it.

As for Azure Ray, this team is made up of former LGD Gaming members, who frequently finished TI in the top four but couldn’t win it. If they win this year, it would be a huge achievement for Somnus and fy. Both of them came close to winning in 2015, 2018, and 2019.

Results

The results of the first round of upper bracket matches looked like this:

• Team Spirit vs. Virtus.pro: 2-1
• Team Liquid vs. Talon Esports: 2-0
• LGD Gaming vs. 9Pandas: 2-0
• Nouns vs. Azure Ray: 0-2

As you can see, three of the four matches had very decisive scores.

Header: Valve