ChaiViz
27.04.2026
The conventional Dota 2 tier list heading into Bucharest held Tundra Esports and Team Yandex as the clear frontrunners. Both teams had just played the ESL One Birmingham 2026 grand final weeks earlier, with Tundra claiming their fourth championship of the season. Neither team survived the group stage. Yandex lost to Team Falcons and South America Rejects in their opening two rounds before NAVI completed their elimination in the 0-2 decider. Tundra fell to HEROIC and Virtus.pro, and MOUZ sent them home. Both teams competed below full strength: Yandex were missing offlaner Evgeniy "Noticed" Ignatenko due to visa complications, with Dmitry "DM" Dorokhin standing in, while Tundra were without star carry Ivan "Pure" Moskalenko, replaced by Alik "V-TUNE" Vorobey. Neither roster could absorb those absences in a format that punishes any stumble immediately.
If you want to make sense of how those results affect the rest of the season, Gocore has Pick'ems open for the upcoming slate of events. Get your predictions locked in before the next major tournament gets underway at Gocore.gg.
BetBoom Team and Aurora Gaming filled the vacuum left by the top seeds, becoming the only two teams to finish the Swiss stage with 3-0 records. BetBoom swept Virtus.pro and Team Liquid in their first two rounds before taking down Falcons 2-1. Aurora ground through three consecutive 2-1 series against South America Rejects, Xtreme Gaming, and PARIVISION to claim their spot. The remaining playoff qualifiers were PARIVISION, Team Liquid, Falcons, South America Rejects, HEROIC, and Team Spirit, a bracket shaped less by expectation than by survival. Any Dota 2 betting site attempting to model that playoff field was working with a completely different set of contenders than the ones it had priced before the event began.
In the upper bracket quarterfinals, Aurora dismissed HEROIC 2-0, BetBoom eliminated Team Spirit, Liquid beat Falcons, and PARIVISION knocked out South America Rejects. The upper bracket semifinals produced extended battles. Aurora recovered from a 29-minute game-one loss to PARIVISION, winning games two and three in 43 and 59 minutes, with Rafli "Mikoto" Fathur Rahman posting a 19-6-34 kill-death-assist ratio for Aurora. BetBoom edged Team Liquid 2-1 in three maps, with Ilya "Kiritych" Ulyanov finishing at 23-9-34 and Michal "Nisha" Jankowski recording 22-14-25 for the losing side.
In the lower bracket, South America Rejects beat HEROIC 2-1, with Frank Ayala registering a 27-12-46 line. Falcons eliminated Team Spirit 2-0, a series in which Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf posted a 23-8-34 performance. Falcons then beat Team Liquid in the lower bracket semifinal to advance to the LB Final, with Liquid finishing the tournament in fourth place. Falcons faced Aurora in that lower bracket final, with Aurora winning to reach the grand final after dropping from the upper bracket.
BetBoom handled the grand final in three maps. The opening game lasted 62 minutes, with both rosters playing a cautious positional game before BetBoom proved more controlled in the closing team fights. Game two finished in 42 minutes and game three in 49, giving BetBoom a 3-0 sweep and the $300,000 first prize. Aurora Gaming collected $175,000 for the runner-up finish. Falcons took third place and $120,000, with Team Liquid in fourth on $80,000. HEROIC and Team Spirit ended the tournament in joint seventh and eighth on $40,000 each. Tundra and Yandex finished 15th-16th on $10,000 apiece.
The upcoming Dota 2 tournaments on the schedule give the field little time to reset. DreamLeague Season 29 runs May 13-24, and both Tundra and Yandex are expected to receive direct invites. BLAST Slam VII follows in late May to early June, with the top tier of the circuit also in line for that field. For BetBoom, a Wallachia title adds weight to a season that had not yet produced this level of result. For Aurora, reaching the grand final through the lower bracket earns its own credibility heading into those events.
The performance of South America Rejects is a subplot worth tracking. Two SA organizations qualifying for a 16-team Tier 1 playoff field, with South America Rejects reaching at minimum the lower bracket semifinals, is the kind of result that will be difficult for tournament organizers to ignore when building future invite lists.
ChaiViz
27.04.2026
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