Preview of WePlay! Pushka League Season 1

The competition WePlay! Pushka League Season 1 will be taking place from 23 April till 12 May online. Seven teams from Europe and CIS will be participating there and only one slot will be given to each winner of the regional qualifiers. The prize pool will account for $250,000.

Pretty soon the Dota 2 championship WePlay! Pushka League Season 1 will be on. Fourteen contestants will be fighting for the prize pool of $250,000. By the way, only representatives of Europe and CIS along with two teams from regional qualifiers will be participating in the event.

Holding format

The organizers invited seven teams from Europe and CIS to the first division while the other two will make it there through the qualifiers. We should mark that all the participants have been divided into groups according to regions. There they are to play in Round Robin with matches up to two wins. Four best teams from each group will pass to the double-elimination bracket.

It's worth noting that all rosters that will not be able to pass the closed qualifier will make it to the second division of WePlay! Pushka League Season 1 and fight for $5,000 and slots in the first division in the second season.

Contestants of WePlay! Pushka League S1: Division 1 will also be invited to the second season, however, two worst rosters of the first season will pass to the second league.

Division of the teams into groups:

Group А

• OG
• Secret
• Nigma
• Liquid
• Alliance
• NiP
• Qualifier

Group В

• NaVi
• Virtus.Pro
• Gambit
• B8
• HellRaisers
• Spirit
• Qualifier

Prize pool grabs

• 1 place: $70,000
• 2 place: $45,000
• 3 place: $30,000
• 4 place: $20,000
• 5-6 place: $12,500
• 7-8 place: $10,000
• 9-10 place: $7,000
• 11-12 place: $5,000
• 13-14 place: $3,000 and moving down to the second division

Teams' chances

Favorites

OG, Secret, Virtus.Pro, Spirit

OG, Secret, Virtus.Pro, and Spirit may definitely be called favorites of the event. These very rosters showed the best results at ESL One Los Angeles 2020 - Online: Europe & CIS, and only one day has passed since it ended. OG and Virtus.Pro played in the grand final, so they are likely to make it far at this event as well. But Team Secret got placed on 5-6 position as they got defeated by Vikin.gg in the lower bracket.

Puppey and the team have definitely worked on their mistakes and at WePlay! Pushka League Season 1, the gamers are going to play with more typical teams and the likelihood for opponents to surprise will be lower.

Outsiders

B8, NiP, Liquid, Gambit

Teams B8, NiP, Liquid, and Gambit may truly be called outsiders of the event as their game has room for improvement. At the previous championship, the teams were not able to make it higher than 12 place. Of course, the guys will have a bigger chance to make it to the playoff as there are only teams fro their region in the first stage. But in general, this will not influence the results of the whole event.

Other participants

Nigma, HellRaisers, NaVi

As for the other participants, here we would pay special attention to Nigma and HellRaisers. The first gamers had mixed results in the group, however, they made it to the playoff but were unable to cope with the unpredictable Chicken Fighters at the playoff while HellRaisers lacked only one win to make it to the playoff. By the way, Nix and the team beat Vikin.gg in the group even though this opponent got to the third position at the end of the tournament.

We should take a separate look at Natus Vincere who spent two game days well but did not win any battle. 9pasha and the team had some obvious problems in gaming but at the group stage of the WePlay tournament, the players have a good chance as they played well at the majority of qualifiers for CIS teams and they had enough time to work on their mistakes.