The Riyadh Masters 2023 is an adrenaline rush for any Dota 2 fan catching the first glimpse of International-grade powerhouses. For the uninitiated, the Riyadh Masters Group Stage concluded just hours ago, whereby eleven out of the sixteen teams are direct invites at the International 12 (TI12).

Yet, the group stage results were vastly different from what we could have anticipated.

Credit: Gamers8

Riyadh Masters 2023 Group Stage Recap

Group A is where Gaimin Gladiators competes, so that’s where the viewer traffic is. However, perhaps there are more contributors than just Gaimin in Group A’s success. Notably, it’s Quest Esports which garnered the most attention for placing top seeds. This team that recently departed with Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf and picked up a new recruit, was able to shut down the naysayers. A huge shoutout goes to the Eastern European candidates too, namely Team Spirit and 9Pandas for being on the upper half of Group A’s scoreboard.

On the other end of the spectrum, team OG and Xtreme Gaming see themselves out of Riyadh Masters as Group A’s bottom seeds. For the most part, both teams did decently to draw most series against their opponents, so it’s a shame they have to leave the event prematurely.

Moreover, they aren’t TI-qualified teams, so surely nobody set the bars too high for them at Riyadh Masters. The same can’t be said for PSG.LGD, Evil Geniuses and even Gaimin for that matter, because it’s frankly been mediocre performance at best. Team Spirit’s Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov even noted that PSG.LGD is merely a husk of their former glory. Back when they had Wang “Ame” Chunyu and Zhang “Faith_bian” Ruida was when PSG.LGD was truly terrifying.

As for EG, they have been falling off ever since the South American hype featured the region as a potential TI12-winning region. That was back in last year’s TI11, so EG has deteriorated heavily since then.

Unfortunately, Tundra Esports has to play without Martin “Saksa” Sazdov’s despite narrowly making it into the lower bracket. Coach Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling stands-in for Tundra.

Expectations at the Riyadh Masters Playoffs

Frankly, group stages with best-of-two round-robin format aren’t always the greatest showcase of team performances. Best-of-three series would have delivered more conclusive results from each opponent.

Team Aster and Team Liquid make the cut for Playoffs confidently, but we surely wasn’t expecting Team Secret among the survivors. They managed to narrowly survive the Group B thanks to a clean series from BetBoom and TSM.

We see BetBoom preaching similarly powerful performance alongside their EEU brethren in Group A. If anything, they are even more successful, if we take into account of how many clean sweeps they had, which is five out of seven series.

For the Southeast Asian fans, Talon Esports got them covered with a strong statement that they are truly SEA’s only hope at Riyadh Masters and the upcoming TI12. Considering how poorly the other SEA rivals have been in recent majors, it’s truly a sight for sore eyes.

Regardless, there are still many interesting teams at the Riyadh Masters Playoffs to catch live today. Our watchlist includes Quest Esports, Talon Esports, Team Aster and Gaimin Gladiators. Of course, besides Gaimin, dubbed the multi-tournament Dota 2 champion for winning every Major and DreamLeague (S19 & S20) this season, most of us expect them to snatch Riyadh Masters’ trophy and $5M winnings too.