Tidebound shine bright in Clavision Masters 2025 Group Stage

It’s been a tale of two sides of the same Chinese coin at Clavision Masters 2025, with one side looking pristine and unblemished, and the other looking scuffed and completely worn out. Team Tidebound, who have pretty consistently been the best Chinese team this entire competitive Dota 2 season, have come out of the group stage with a perfect 4-0 record in matches — which has them poised for a deep run in this tournament.

On the other hand, Xtreme Gaming and Yakult Brothers have both put in rather embarrassing performances thus far in front of the home crowd. They are currently 1-3 and 0-4 respectively in series score, and so they will both have to start the playoffs from the lower bracket. Worse still, they’ve been seeded against each other down there, which means that one Chinese squad is guaranteed to not even see the next round.

Not a great start overall for the home teams, with only Tidebound making it so that the local fans still have something to cheer for.

Spoiled milk

Yakult Brothers’ namesake is being put to real shame right now, because whatever they’re doing at this event is just not cutting it. Their manager Wang “Yakult” Hao probably wants to go hide in a corner at this point, though that’s probably the last thing this team needs if they want to actually rally themselves once the playoffs start tomorrow.

Their worst result this entire tournament has to be the 0-2 loss versus Team Yandex, one of the absolute weakest lineups at Clavision Masters 2025 and also in general across the entirety of the competitive scene. How do you get shown up so hard by a team that didn’t even exist until last month, and in front of your own countrymen too?

Not that I ever expected much from this team to begin with, but surely they can win at least one map? They’ve lost every single game so far, which is just humiliating to say the least. And they’re up against XG tomorrow, which probably means we’ll be saying bye-bye to the Yakult Brothers before they even manage to win a game of Dota at home.

Oh well, at least XG are doing better. Marginally better.

Crashing wave

Team Tidebound, on the other hand, have been excellent out of the gate, as they have only lost two maps out of the 10 that they’ve played so far. Beating Yakult Brothers and Yandex isn’t anything to write home about, but compounding those results with victories over Gaimin Gladiators and BetBoom Team? Now we’re cooking.

That resounding win over BetBoom was of particular note, as Tidebound just looked really comfortable playing against such a skilled roster. It did help that BetBoom went back to their old ways in the second game by throwing a net worth lead worth over 18,000 gold, but kudos to Tidebound for capitalizing on those mistakes in the first place.

All in all, this squad looks ready to make the Chinese fans proud. Their first opponent in the upper bracket is Nigma Galaxy, a matchup that I’m confident Tidebound can navigate just fine.

Don’t get me started on Nigma, who also came out of their group with a perfect match record. I don’t trust them enough to not look completely different (in a bad way) after “surprising” everyone in the group stage.

More of the same

The results elsewhere in the group stage are more or less what we’ve all come to expect at this point in the season. Aside from Nigma being in yet another position to fool everyone into thinking they’re back, PARIVISION are up there in Group A with a 3-1 record, followed by Tundra Esports at 2-2. If you removed Nigma from the picture, PARIVISION being ahead of Tundra would be just about right considering how the season has gone so far in general.

Then on the other side, BetBoom and Gaimin have followed suit behind Tidebound. Absolutely nothing strange about where these two teams are right now. BetBoom will face Tundra in the upper bracket quarterfinals, while Gaimin will go up against PARIVISION in the same round.

BOOM Esports and Team Yandex, meanwhile, are both in early danger of elimination. Again, nothing shocking here, as both of these squads are well below the point where I’d consider a team to be a real contender — whether here at Clavision Masters or just in the competitive scene as a whole.

The Clavision Masters 2025 playoffs begin tomorrow, July 31st, starting with Tundra Esports versus BetBoom Team at 10pm ET/7pm PT. You can watch the games in English through Benjamin “Bkop” Kopilow’s Twitch and YouTube streams.