Team Secret announces their participation in the ESL One Hamburg event, while a new Dota 2 team is established by syndereN.
Team Secret invited to ESL One Hamburg
Team Secret has confirmed that they will be attending the ESL One Hamburg Dota 2 tournament, set to take place in late October this year. The announcement was posted on the team’s official Twitter account yesterday.
#SecretDota is returning to Germany for #ESLOne Hamburg 2018 at the end of October to make their European LAN debut! #SecretFighting
More Details: https://t.co/vFqbKBrUph pic.twitter.com/Axkze42hNG
— Team Secret (@teamsecret) September 12, 2018
Team Secret has had a successful history in the Dota 2 professional scene, though in 2018 their performance has been less than stellar. The team competed in The International 2018 but was eliminated by Team Liquid and placed in the 5-6th bracket. They also took part in the DreamLeague Season 9 in March, where they won the tournament, beating Fnatic 3-0, as well as, in the Captains Draft 4.0 where they also took first place.
Outside of those two events, Team Secret has not won any major tournament in 2018. The ESL One Katowice 2018 saw the Secret beaten by Team Liquid, leaving them in the 5-6th bracket, while in the China Dota 2 Supermajor they lost to Virtus.pro and left in fourth place.
The ESL One Hamburg will start on 23 October and will conclude on 28 October the same week. So far, two other teams have received invitations to the event, namely Virtus.pro and Evil Geniuses. Five more Direct Invite slots remain open, with four more teams to be determined via Qualifier tournaments. In total, 12 teams will take part in the event, competing for a share of the $300,000 prize pool.
The teams will be separated into two groups of six and will compete in the Round Robin format in best-of-two matches. The two worst performing teams of each group will be eliminated from the event, while the four best performing teams will have to play fewer matches to enter the finals.
Troels “syndereN” Nielsen announces new Dota 2 team
Yesterday, professional Dota 2 player and occasional caster syndereN has announced the formation of a new Dota 2 team. The news comes directly from his personal Twitter account, published on 13 September.
— Troels Nielsen (@syndereNDota) September 13, 2018
The new lineup will be called Happy Guys and will include the following players:
- Troels “syndereN” Nielsen
- Ilya “Illidan” Pivtsaev
- Kirill “Kzar” Stepanets
- Joni “Buugi” Falt
- Mohammad “AfrOmoush” Abu Aleis
Of the whole lineup, syndereN and Illidan seem to be the most experienced. SyndereN has been in the Dota 2 professional scene since 2009, playing both the original Dota and Dota 2. He has been part of Ninjas in Pyjamas, mousesports, Wild Honey Badgers, and was recently playing with a team called Mad Lads, until it disbanded in June of this year.
Illidan, on the other hand, has been part of Virtus.pro and Team Spirit, among others. He had been a member of Team Spirit for two months during 2016 and was brought in again as a stand-in in November 2017, being promoted to the active lineup in December. He left Team Spirit in August 2018. As far as his tenure in Virtus.pro is concerned, Illidan was a member when VP won multiple tournaments, triumphing over teams such as NaVi, HellRaisers and Fnatic.
Buugi is a Finnish player who joined the Dota 2 professional circuit as a member of Rat in the dark in 2012. Since then, he has played multiple low- and mid-tier tournaments, winning several of them as a part of PENTA Sports and 4 Anchors + Sea Captain.
AfrOmoush is a 21-year-old player from Jordan, who has been a Dota 2 professional since 2016. He has enjoyed some success in several mid-tier events, but no major tournaments. Among his accomplished, AfrOmoush counts multiple tournament wins as part of Clutch Gaming, WarriorsGaming.Unity, and Heralds. Most recently, he was a member of Commence Esports, until he left the team in late August 2018.
As far as Kzar is concerned, no information can be found about this player, save that he hails from Ukraine.
