OG pick up TORONTOTOKYO, move Nikko to their Dota 2 inactive list

Well, that’s a headline I didn’t think I’d be writing today, because Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek is now officially part of OG’s Dota 2 squad.

He’ll be joining the team in the offlane position, replacing the outgoing Nikko “Nikko” Bilocura. Nikko will be riding the bench for the foreseeable future, which in the world of contracts in Dota 2 probably means he’ll be playing for a different team for the rest of this season.

Nearly out of left field

I can’t believe this isn’t an April Fool’s joke late by nine days or something like that, because this is actually real looking at the announcement on OG’s official social media channels. TORONTOTOKYO most recently played offlane for Aurora Gaming, before leaving his previous team just one week into 2026. He was eventually replaced by Chung “Ws” Wei Shen literally the next day, which kicked off the new mixed Southeast Asia-CIS era of Aurora, if you will.

OG are thrilled to welcome Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek to OG Esports!

TI winner with Team Spirit and a fierce competitor, Alexander is pulling on the green and gold. TT is ready to make his mark, and we can't wait to see what he brings to the squad.

Let's get to work. pic.twitter.com/VkjOs1zacI

— OG (@OGesports) April 9, 2026

It took him four months and change to find a new club to play for, but here he is now, a member of the sole organization that has won The International in back-to-back years. Given that coach Adam “343” Shah talked to us about the OG roster needing a break considering their mediocre form as of late, as well as their recent troubles regarding visas, I’m kind of surprised things have moved in this direction so quickly.

The missing piece?

That said, there’s a fairly easy explanation for this move. It probably has plenty to do with Southeast Asian teams being mechanically gifted, but rather inept at actually following through on the advantages they build for themselves in the early game. There’s a reason that teams from the region are notorious in the Dota 2 community for choking in late game scenarios, and that’s because most of them genuinely don’t have the discipline and know-how to capitalize on their starts.

So, enter TORONTOTOKYO, who has captured the most coveted prize in all of Dota once in his career. I would bet that this acquisiton is in line with hopefully getting the rest of the lineup to lock in properly in the late game, which has been their biggest weakness this entire season.

The potential for greater things has always been there with OG in their Southeast Asian era, but having an all-Filipino roster with no shotcaller around to instill confidence in the late game was likely never going to cut it in the long run. We’ve seen this before with TNC Pro Team and TNC Predator in the past: both Sivatheeban “1437” Sivanathapillai and Jimmy “DeMoN” Ho helped lead them to much better results than they would have otherwise been able to manage at the time.

TORONTOTOKYO’s arrival in OG kind of reminds of those days. He’s got a proven track record and has seen it all in his career, and he knows what it takes to win when the pressure is at its highest. And while he is not really the same player that he was when he and Team Spirit won at TI10, this team likely doesn’t need him to be — they just need him to tell them what to do past the first 15 minutes of the game.

Whether or not this will actually pan out for OG has yet to be seen, but the signing does make sense from a roster construction standpoint.