Dota 2 Riyadh Masters: Quest, OG, Secret among teams advancing to Group Stage

The Dota 2 Riyadh Masters 2023 Play-Ins concluded on Friday morning (21 July), with eight teams advancing to the Group Stage.

After Team Liquid and Team Aster punched their tickets to the Group Stage in day one of the Play-Ins, Quest Esports and Xtreme Gaming followed suit by taking the Top 2 spots in Group B.

That left the four remaining Group Stage spots to be determined through cross-group matches between the third to sixth-placed teams in each group.

North America's TSM, Eastern Europe's 9Pandas, as well as OG and Team Secret from Western Europe advanced to the Group Stage after they defeated Beastcoast, Virtus.pro, Entity, and Execration in the Play-In deciders.

Here's how all the action in day two of the Riyadh Masters Play-Ins went down:

Quest, Xtreme, TSM, OG, 9Pandas, Secret advance to Group Stage

Before the Play-In deciders could be played, one more set of matches for each group first had to be played to determine the final seedings.

Aster and Liquid kicked off the action in Group A, with the Chinese squad scoring a 2-0 sweep for little more than bragging rights. Meanwhile, the TSM-Virtus.pro and Execration-Entity matches ended in 1-1 sweeps.

That then necessitated a tiebreaker between Execration and Virtus.pro for the fifth and sixth seeds. In a huge throwback to the old Dota days, the tiebreaker was decided in a one-versus-one, all-mid showdown with Shadow Fiend between the two team's midlaners.

Execration's Mark "Bob" Urbina bested Virtus.pro's Ilya "squad1x" Kuvaldin to give his team the better seed for the ensuing Play-In deciders.

Over in Group B, Quest and Xtreme secured the Top 2 spots of their group alongside automatic Group Stage seeds by sweeping Beastcoast and OG, respectively. The other match between Secret and 9Pandas, on the other hand, ended in a 1-1 draw.

With those results, the matchups for the Play-Ins deciders was set with TSM facing Beastcoast, OG taking on Entity, 9Pandas pitted against Virtus.pro, and Secret matched up with Execration.

Here's how the Play-In deciders went down:

TSM 2-0 Beastcoast

In a showdown between stalwarts of the North and South American scenes, TSM swept Beastcoast to secure the first Riyadh Masters Group Stage spot out of the Play-In deciders.

TSM started the series strong with a comfortable 30-minute victory keyed by a strong midgame timing behind Enzo "Timado" Gianoli's Drow Ranger and Jonathan "Bryle" De Guia's Ember Spirit. Offlaner Gainullin "kasane" Ilyas on Beastmaster notched a game-high eight kills against four deaths to pace TSM's 30-11 kill lead in game one.

Beastcoast put up a much better fight in game two, where they led from the early to midgame before TSM mounted a late game comeback to secure the 2-0 series sweep after 57 minutes of action.

Timado on Slark and Bryle on Leshrac led the way for TSM, racking up 16-3-15 and 13-4-18 KDA lines in a slugfest that ended with TSM up 37-27 in kills.

OG 2-0 Entity

The second Play-In decider was an all-Western Europe affair between OG and Entity. Entity actually had a strong start to the match, but OG were able to turn the tables and secure a spot in the Group Stage in a 2-0 sweep.

Entity had a dominant start to the series and were knocking on OG's base as early as the 25-minute mark. However, an ill-advised dive by Entity into OG's tier 4 towers allowed Dmitry "DM" Dorokhin on Enigma to get a huge three-man Black Hole that turned the tides in OG's favour.

OG went on to complete their game one comeback win in 42 minutes. Bozhidar "bzm" Bogdanov on Windranger had the game-high in kills with 11 against three deaths while DM pitched in with five kills and a game-turning Black Hole on four deaths.

Entity seemingly lost all momentum after losing what should have been an easy game one victory, as they didn't put up much of a fight as OG stomped them in a 29-minute game two. Bzm once again led in kills to lead OG to the Group Stage, racking up 16 kills on just two deaths with Puck.

9Pandas 2-1 Virtus.pro

The third match of the Play-In deciders was another intra-regional showdown, this time between Eastern Europe's 9Pandas and Virtus.pro. Virtus.pro had a strong start to the series, but 9Pandas managed to score the 2-1 reverse sweep to secure their spot in the Group Stage.

Things looked really, really good for Virtus.pro in game one, as they stomped 9Pandas in 36 minutes behind a show-stopping performance from squad1x on a mid Tiny. Squad1x racked up a whopping 23 kills on just two deaths to fuel Virtus.pro's 35-10 kill lead.

9Pandas were quick to shake off their game one loss as they were the ones doing the stomping on Virtus.pro in a 31-minute game two. Gleb "kiyotaka" Zyryanov on Pangolier had 11 kills against only one death to pace 9Pandas' 28-11 kill lead to tie up the series.

9Pandas' momentum continued in game three, where they earned their place in the Group Stage in a 29-minute rout. Kiyotaka on Windranger once again led his team in kills with 12 on four deaths as 9Pandas nearly doubled Virtus.pro's kill score, 31-16.

Team Secret 2-1 Execration

The fourth Play-In decider match between Team Secret and Execration saw the Western European squad (notably with two Southeast Asian players) secure the last Group Stage spot over their Southeast Asian opponents in a 2-1 series victory.

Game one started with Secret in a commanding position, as they leveraged a strong laning stage into strong map control by the midgame. However, Execration turned the tables by outmanoeuvring Secret in skirmishes and sneaking a Roshan right under their noses.

With Secret's momentum halted, Execration went on the offensive and dominated the ensuing teamfights behind Jinn "Palos" Lamatao's Faceless Void en route to a 47-minute win.

Secret were quick to strike back in game two behind their two Southeast Asian players: Armel "Armel" Tabios on a mid Earthshaker and Saieful "Fbz" Ilham on Spirit Breaker.

Secret once again dominated the laning stage, this time cleanly snowballing to a 37-minute win. Armel had 11 kills on four deaths to pace his team's 34-12 kill lead while Fbz pitched in with eight against four deaths.

Game three followed a very similar script to game two's and even ended in 37 minutes again as Secret advanced to the Group Stage. This time around, it was Remco "Crystallis" Arets on Bloodseeker that led the way with 10 kills on just one death out of Secret's 34-12 kill lead.

With the conclusion of the Riyadh Masters Play-Ins, Beastcoast, Entity, Virtus.pro, and Execration have been eliminated in 17th-20th place. All four teams will be going home with US$50,000 in consolation.

Meanwhile, the teams that advanced to the Group Stage have guaranteed themselves at least US$100,000 in winnings.

The Riyadh Masters Group Stage will commence from 21 to 24 July. Two groups of eight teams each, comprised of directly-invited teams and the teams who survived the Play-Ins, will be battling in a single round-robin to be among the 12 teams advancing to the Playoffs.

The Top 4 teams of each group will earn upper bracket berths in the Playoffs while the fifth to sixth-placed teams will have to start in the lower bracket. Meanwhile, the bottom two teams of each group will be eliminated.

The Riyadh Masters 2023 is the biggest Dota 2 event this year outside of the 2023 Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) season, featuring a massive US$15 million prize pool. The champions of the Riyadh Masters will go home with a handsome US$5 million grand prize.

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