There haven’t exactly been a lot of upsets during the Chinese regional qualifiers but the first team to go through this stage has qualified for TI. Team Zero will be playing their first LAN at The International 2024. The second Chinese space will come down to the winner of G2.IG vs. Team Turtle against Azure Ray. But we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to know who’ll be facing off for that second spot.

How did they do it?

You could be forgiven for not knowing who Team Zero is. You might be familiar with names like Ponlo and zzq but if you’re the kind of Dota fan who follows qualifiers, you’ll likely never forget them. They’ve fought hard every series and ended with 2-1 victories each time.

The final game against Azure Ray really didn’t look good for Zero in the first few minutes. They were down 9-1 kills and at a significant gold disadvantage. It seems Azure made the mistake of not dealing with Erica’s Drow Ranger early on and then it became a simple case of farm her up and right click enemies into oblivion.  This, together with some very well timed Overgrowths from Treant Protector made the formidable Black Hole and Sunder combination from Azure Ray fall apart completely.

Huge victory for Chinese Dota

Chinese Dota has been on the verge of an epic comeback for some time. Perhaps some new blood will be what it takes for them to knock Europe out of their multi-year win streak.

During his post match interview with Dominik “Lacoste” Stipić and Benjamin “Bkop” Kopilow, Ponlo really expressed how excited he is to qualify for The International but similarly expressed that it’s important to him to make his career his own.

 “You have to be so introspective to be a pro Dota player…it’s your own life, your own career, you just do what you want”

With an Team Zero already qualified, we might have yet another underdog story on our hands. For now, it’s time for Team Zero to start grinding to get TI ready in time for September.