Esports | Dota 2 | Team Spirit — The 3-0 Second Aegis at Climate Pledge Arena

On 29 October 2023, Team Spirit and Gaimin Gladiators entered the Dota 2 booths inside Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena for the grand final of The International 2023, the publisher-run championship commonly called TI12. The event used the Windows PC version of Dota 2 on patch 7.34d in Captains Mode, where each five-player team bans and selects heroes before trying to destroy the opposing Ancient, the fortified structure at the center of the enemy base. Team Spirit fielded Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk as carry, Denis “Larl” Sigitov in mid, Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov in the offlane, and supports Myroslav “Mira” Kolpakov and captain Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov. Their opponent’s roster was Anton “dyrachyo” Shkredov, Quinn “Quinn” Callahan, Marcus “Ace” Hoelgaard, Erik “tOfu” Engel, and captain Melchior “Seleri” Hillenkamp, a lineup that had won all three Dota Pro Circuit Majors held earlier in 2023. The championship was a best-of-five series, so three game wins—not kills, rounds, or individual fights—were required to claim the Aegis of Champions, and Team Spirit took the first game before Collapse’s Magnus helped them make the score 2–0. Gaimin Gladiators built the stronger position in game three, and Valve’s official recap reported that the in-client Dota Plus model gave them a 95 percent chance of forcing a fourth game around the thirty-minute mark. Team Spirit overturned that position through later team fights, completed the third game, and closed the final 3–0 without requiring either of the remaining possible games. The sweep gave Team Spirit its second International championship after its 2021 victory and made the organization only the second to win the tournament twice, following OG’s titles in 2018 and 2019. The location matters because earlier portions of the 2023 event used other Seattle sites, while the final weekend and this deciding series were staged inside Climate Pledge Arena rather than at the Seattle Convention Center or an online player location. The photograph shows the arena’s exterior in May 2022, not the match itself; visitors can still identify the broad preserved roof above the rebuilt arena bowl at Seattle Center. Primary sources: https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3731854745514680599 ; https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3703691393788404860 Independent source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestubbs/2023/10/29/team-spirit-wins-the-international-12-to-become-two-time-champions/ Build reference: https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Game_Versions Photo: Sea Cow, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Pledge_Arena_N.jpg