TI14 Day 3 — China on top while SEA drowns

The Swiss group stage at The International 2025 (TI14) just concluded, and I am very happy to report that 2/3 Chinese representatives have advanced to the playoffs. Both Xtreme Gaming and Team Tidebound are now guaranteed to make it through, which is huge news for a region that has not exactly been thriving over the last 1-2 years.

Unfortunately, it’s not all positives for a Southeast Asian like myself, as neither BOOM Esports nor Team Nemesis will proceed from here. They both struggled mightily through the group stage, and have been eliminated. Not a great showing whatsoever, with neither team even managing to take a series off Wildcard — the team that I placed last in the power rankings.

加油! (jiā yóu)

It’s been a very auspicious three days for Chinese Dota 2, with Xtreme Gaming leading the charge thanks to a perfect 4-0 record in the group stage. Wang “Ame” Chunyu has been exceptional so far, regularly carrying his team to victory and playing out of his mind in general. Of course, given his results over the years, this is nothing surprising at all — and honestly, this guy always gets a buff at The International.

That said, Ame is known to be a serial choker at TI, with multiple instances of folding like a lawn chair when he gets within reach of the Aegis. Whether or not he can get his team across the finish line this time is still very much up in the air, so I’m definitely not drawing any conclusions from this hot start just yet.

On the other side, Tidebound had themselves a nice 4-1 run through the first three days, locking down a playoff berth early and saving themselves from having to deal with the elimination stage. I had them in seventh place in my power rankings, so they are technically playing above expectations — but honestly, this doesn’t come as a big shock given that they won Clavision Masters just a few weeks ago.

This team is absolutely capable of making a deep run here, and this is a great way to start things off. They’ll have to lock in even harder in the playoffs, though, as I’m sure they don’t want to be sent to the lower bracket right off the bat.

SEA ya

Seeing both SEA teams not even make it to the elimination stage was painful. Team Nemesis didn’t win a single series, and eventually got eliminated by fellow SEA squad BOOM Esports. Quite frankly, Nemesis just didn’t look prepared for TI14 at all, with their overall coordination just lacking in all sorts of ways.

The first team eliminated from The Road to The International: Playoffs 2025 is @nmss_gg #Dota2 #TI2025 pic.twitter.com/kRu55QBTwU

— The International (@dota2ti) September 5, 2025

Coming so close to beating Team Falcons on the first day of proceedings, only to fall short in the third game, visibly took them out of it. They couldn’t complete the comeback against Yakutou Brothers in round 2 of the Swiss stage, either and it all went downhill from there for Nemesis.

BOOM didn’t really fare much better. The fact that their only series win the entire event was against Nemesis tells you all you need to know, really. They had a chance to at least go 2-3 coming out of the preliminaries by beating Wildcard today, but they couldn’t even manage that. A shame too, after they crushed Wildcard in the first game of that series, only to completely collapse in the two games after.

Elimination Station

With all the group stage games out of the way, the elimination stage is next. HEROIC and Yakutou Brothers actually played their elimination series already, with HEROIC making it out and into the playoffs.

But there’s still four elimination matches remaining, and, get this: two clubs out of Team Liquid, Tundra Esports, Team Falcons, and Team Spirit will not even advance to the playoffs of The International. So much for maximising rank difference.

The bracket draws have somehow worked out this way, putting these squads against one another in the upcoming single elimination bracket. These matches will be best-of-three, but just the very thought of Spirit or Tundra failing to even make the top 8 is just unfathomable.

It’ll make for incredibly exciting Dota tomorrow, though, that’s for sure. The stakes could only be higher if we were talking about the lower bracket finals or the grand finals, but we are still days away from either of those rounds. I can’t wait.