Chinese Conspiracy Theory: President Putin, Yatoro's Billionaire Father, xiao8 bet against PSG.LGD

Several days have passed since The International 10, almost all the teams have returned home, the fans have recovered from the emotional explosion after the final, but the intrigues and various conspiracy theories about the main tournament of the last two years have not stopped. This time, Internet users from China delighted us. One of the PSG.LGD fans suggested that The International 10 is fiction and a universal conspiracy theory.

He found as many as 26 arguments in favor of his theory. There are quite funny ones among them. Let's run through each and think, what if Team Spirit are just actors, and all of us were deceived. Let's divide all the arguments into two parts: more or less adequate and logical arguments, which are confirmed by video fragments and clippings from official matches of the teams, and facts, the only help of which is the presence of a worldwide conspiracy theory.

1. The deciding map in the lower bracket Virtus.pro vs Team Spirit. VP has taken Aegis and is leading by Net Worth. When viewing the moment from GPK, it is clear that Danil noticed how Team Spirit broke the sentry ward. Then GPK checked enemy number three and found three Team Spirit heroes there. Instead of leaving, he goes ahead, spends skills, dies, and is immediately buybacks, although the team was not going to fight at that moment. After that, Luna exposes himself, loses Aegis, dies a second time, Spirit returns to the game and closes the series in their favor.

The only drawback of this funny post on Reddit, in which the Chinese theory is translated, is that there are no clips or at least time codes in it so that it is clear what specific moment the author is talking about. Perhaps we are talking about this GPK move, only after his death, NightFall died only once, and GPK himself did not spend the buyback. And the Virtus.pro team after that moment, made a couple of good runs and regained the advantage of about five thousand gold.

According to the description of the Chinese fan, the episode is as similar as possible to this one. Entering the number three, he caught three rival heroes, but again no buybacks. There is some logic in this action. There was a run to Lina from above, GPK came in from the rear, cutting off possible approaches of the opponent. Gang failed, but GPK didn't let Team Spirit come to his team either. GPK played the entire third map as aggressively as he could, attracting the attention of opponents, and providing freedom of action to Luna. Yes, Invoker has gone down in Net Worth. Yes, he died an extra couple of times somewhere, but according to the strategy of Virtus.pro, the map was supposed to be won by Luna under Alacrity. And Invoker will give Alacrity with a minimum of money in his pocket.

Virtus.pro played the map most likely at this moment. All the heroes spent a lot of resources, which is why it was not possible to carry out a high-quality attack. And the Invoker's buyback was quite logical. Despite Luna's death after the buyback, Virtus.pro did not give Roshan away, were able to recline with buttons and stall for time. Okay, let's go to the following arguments.

2. Invictus Gaming vs Team Spirit. "Golden Domes" by flyfly. Plus, he didn't take on Faceless Void talent for attack speed. Well, it's watertight. From the over-pressure and incredibly brazen game of Team Spirit, IG players began to dopy. Not only did flyfly mess up, but the rest of the Invictus Gaming players pressed the buttons far from optimally, not to mention making decisions.

3. Team Secret vs Team Spirit, the final of the lower bracket of the playoffs. In the first map, Secret did not feel the opponent, they easily dealt with him. Secret was in the map from the best result in the history of the team, however, the players did not look enthusiastic.

On the second map, Zai buybacked himself on Magnus, but Secret pushed the smoke without him. Zai still went ahead of the whole team and died instantly. After that, Secret turned around, and Nisha (Matumbaman played on Juggernaut) first used Blade Fury, then Shadow Blade, then Healing Ward, and only then began to teleport. Spirit won.

Team Secret was just going to push the bottom line and hardly expected that Lion would find such a non-standard position to dig. But all the same, Secret was on a hill and could easily fight. But then Grimstroke dies from the splash from Admiral Kunkka's blow, and all the Secret go to retreat. Matumbaman first wanted to get into a fight, so he pressed Blade Fury so as not to get bogged down in the Dark Willow, then put Healing Ward to save Magnus and then decided to move behind a tree, because otherwise Morphling would have had enough damage to kill him. Yes, he miscalculated a little, and Blade Fury finished before the teleport, but it is impossible not to praise Spirit, who felt it in time, transmitted information because three heroes at once at the end of the twister gave abilities in Juggernaut: Morf under pumping into force, Kunkka's cross, and Fairy's Terrorize.

In the decisive game, Secret knew that the Wyvern had a Blink, but Lina still stood between the Lycan and Tiny. Firstly, Team Spirit had already led more than 10 thousand gold by this point. Secondly, Sven was getting stronger by the minute compared to Team Secret's cores. Thirdly, the European team had a good position on the hill to take the fight, given Tiny's procast, Titan's furrow, and Lina's camp. Yes, Miposhka played perfectly. But if he hadn't given out that course, Team Spirit could have died in this fight with the whole team. So far all the arguments have gone to waste.

4. PSG.LGD vs Team Spirit. The Grand Final. In a match between the same teams during ESL One Fall a month earlier, LGD banned Magnus twice in the first stage of bans. Then the team managed to win, even despite the absence of mider NothingToSay in the team. The team beat Team Spirit and easily won the championship. Far-fetched again. In the first map of the match at ESL, Team Spirit calmly took Magnus to double pick in the first stage and lost this map. On the second map, PSG.LGD banned Magnus but lost. And only in the third map did Magnus's ban help.

And the Chinese enthusiast embellished a little about winning the championship. PSG.LGD then met with Team Spirit already in the lower bracket of the playoffs, and in the Grand Final, the Chinese team lost to Tundra Esports. It is quite possible that the author was mistaken and meant the OGA Dota Pit Invitational, which took place exactly a month before The International 10. Then PSG.LGD really beat Team Spirit in the Grand Final with a score of 3-1. But both teams simply ignored Magnus there. The hero was neither in picks nor bans.

5. In the first map of the Grand Final, LGD took Pangolier to the mid, on which NothingToSay has only 38% of the win rate in public, and in general. There were not so many games. We confirm the argument. In the Russian-speaking community, the choice of Pango raised some questions, since in official matches NothingToSay played the hero only once a few years ago and lost.

6. In the second and fifth maps of the Grand Final, Faith_Bian wore tier-1 neutral artifacts throughout the game. Although, for example, in the T1 Esports vs Team Secret match, everyone wore items of the fourth tier. This happens often, especially in hard-fought matches. Often players deliberately choose artifacts of a lower category but often experienced players completely forget about a relatively recent innovation.

7. Team Secret vs Team Spirit match. On the third map, Zai took the Grow Bow for a melee hero, although he could have given it to Nisha, who played on Lina. There is logic in this, but Nisha chose a Vambrace for himself, then bought a Silver Edge, and only at the 28th minute took the Grow Bow to increase the attack distance. 

8. Before the fifth map of the Grand Final, LGD should have felt confident of their victory after an easy fourth map, however, xiao8 was hysterical and avoided the camera, as did the whole team, which did not look enthusiastic. Although, when they had 0-2, the team looked calm, smiled. and was not nervous. There is a hint of the contractual nature of the match. Like, PSG.LGD initially knew that they had to lose, but then, after winning two maps, they became nervous that everything was not going according to plan. So what's so scary about that? They won two cards, imposed a fight, covered our tracks, no one in the history of the finals of The International has won back from 0-2. Why be nervous? What's so hard about losing the deciding map?

9. On the fifth map, LGD led four thousand gold. All players (except Ame) were on the radiant triangle. Not a single Spirit hero was visible on the map, but Ame was at the bottom and was repelling creeps in a rather dangerous area. He saw Winter Wyvern and went straight into the whole Spirit team. This was observed by both LGD support, who, seeing the attack on Ame, immediately switched the camera to their heroes, as if nothing had happened and belatedly began to teleport.

First, PSG.LGD won the start. Secondly, Magnus and Ember Spirit appeared on the map and farmed on the central and upper lines. Ame thought that he is dense enough not to be afraid of a Terrorblade lagging behind by a couple of levels and a couple of supports without damage. He made a mistake, the damage was enough. And XinQ, which immediately dragged on, managed to show a good ultimate on Terrorblade. And this despite the fact that it was still necessary to have time to run from the tier-1 tower to the place of the fight. Another nonsense about the sale of carry.

10. LGD climbed under the enemy tier-2 tower from below. Terrorblade had less than half of his health left, Tiny still had toss and tree throw (avalanche spent), but Ame turned around, NothingToSay canceled the tidebringer animation. Terrorblade managed to swap on his health on full hp, LGD died as a whole team. The logic of PSG.LGD's actions is that they lead, they are on a timer, they cannot lose fights. If they had stayed there to kill Terrorblade, they would have been dieв as a team and lost all advantage. They exchanged support two-in-one, but Ember Spirit came and started to break up. There was a call to retreat. Everyone ran in all directions, but Kunkka didn't come out from under the tower, Ember tied two. And Team Spirit got the job done. Initially, it was not the most competent attack, from which LGD tried to get out with a minimum of losses but could not.

11. LGD pushed smokes, Enchantress came across an enemy Terrorblade, but instead of slowing down the enemy carry, the Chinese team's support spent two seconds to break the sentry ward. Even Team Spirit themselves managed to answer this claim on the air of Vecherny Urgant. Terrorblade had Aegis, and it was pointless to spend any buttons in it, so the Chinese support tried to find at least some benefit for their team and broke the ward.

12. The group stage of The International. The Evil Geniuses vs OG match. The official broadcast has already shown that Team Secret and OG will meet in the next round. If you look carefully at the schedule of the group stage, then exactly before the EG vs OG match, Team Secret and Elephant played on the same channel. A typo is quite likely. When announcing the next match, team A in the name of the match was changed to the wrong one.

13. Even before the start of the group stage on the Liquipedia portal, Team Spirit was listed as the winner of The International 10. It's quite simple. Such notes are made in advance for each team to have up-to-date information about the winning team on the portal as quickly as possible immediately after the end of the final.

14. Before the final of the lower bracket, it was shown on the official broadcast that Team Spirit and PSG.LGD will play in the Grand Final. The official Twitter of Team Secret published this remark, but almost immediately the post was deleted, and Team Secret lost in the losers' final. A mistake similar to that in argument 12. The last game that was played before the losers' final was the battle between Team Spirit and Invictus Gaming. So there may be an error on the chart, which was a banal typo of the editors who had been working for 10 days in a crazy schedule by that time. A bunch of similar errors in the schedule can be found on the broadcast of any tournament. It's just that too much attention was focused on the Grand Final of The International 10, so more people noticed mistakes. And there were questions about the quality of the tournament organization besides typos on the broadcast.

15. Collapse wrote on his blog that he is a Tea Eye Winner even before the finals. Yes, then many media from the CIS drew attention to this, and the fans hurried to warn Magomed against excessive self-confidence, which appeared after two emotional victories over OG and Virtus.pro. But many professional athletes allow themselves loud statements. This is an element of the show that attracts additional attention to their activities. The fact that no one has done this before in Dota is another matter. But this is absolutely normal behavior for a modern athlete.

16. 14 of the 18 teams were sponsored by bookmakers. Bookmakers sponsor football clubs and become title sponsors of many championships. It is thanks to bookmakers that the sport is developing, and we see more and more large-scale events every year. This is the truth of life but in no way proof of a conspiracy theory. Moreover, the bookmaker earns at any outcome of the event.

17. Not so long ago in VPGaming (a subsidiary of PSG.LGD) a financial audit was conducted. According to rumors, the organization is experiencing financial difficulties, and Chalice said that he has not yet been paid about $ 30,000 in salary bonuses. All these checks are connected with a rather high-profile case of fraud of the owner of the LGD RuRu team. She and her husband were involved in scandals related to money laundering, buying insider information, and many others. But this is a topic for a separate large article.

18. Xiao8 has been caught betting on professional games more than once. These are all rumors and scandals related to the Director's ex-wife. And no substantial evidence of xiao8's involvement in fixed matches or betting against his team was provided. Similar stories about xiao's gambling hobbies pop up in the Chinese community regularly, usually after defeats of the teams that xiao8 is associated with.

Further, the author of the article gives several more arguments but immediately warns that they are all based on rumors and have no evidence behind them.

19. Team Spirit has always been a tier-2 team and has never achieved such high results. And here they beat the six best teams in the world and won The International. This has never happened before. What about OG on the 8th International? Did anyone then bet on the team of the open qualification? They were even bigger underdogs than Spirit. Only Team Spirit reached the final a month before the main tournament at the preparatory ESL One Fall, beating everyone except PSG.LGD.

20. Virtus.pro had a winstrike in 29 matches against the Spirit team but then lost because of GPK VP. Firstly, any streak ends at some point. And secondly, Virtus.pro and Team Spirit have not previously met in such distant stages at The International. As they say: "At The International, they don't play Dota, but International."

21. Each of the top teams, when meeting with Team Spirit, began to do something ludicrous. Inconsistent drafts, illogical play, all teams started behaving strangely. Take, for example, Team Secret, which began to lose after a fairly easy first map. Again, the phenomenon of The International. Each of the teams that Team Spirit met, even before the start of the tournament, caused concern because of their moral stability (except for OG, who had other objective reasons why they could not play to the maximum).

22. The Grand Final. On the first two maps, LGD's pico-ban stage was terrible. Then they won two maps confidently. And on the fifth map, they turned on the "dumb game" mode. There has never been such a thing in history. Never in history has anyone won back from 0-2 in the Grand Final of The International. Neither could PSG.LGD.

23. It is rumored that Yatoro's father is an influential billionaire in Eastern Europe. And the tournament was held in Eastern Europe (not confirmed). Well, since it is not confirmed, then there is no point in commenting on the obvious nonsense.

24. Seven Rampages have been made in the history of The International. And Yatoro, who was nobody before The International, made three in one tournament. Dota evolves and changes from tournament to tournament. New patches are coming out that make possible what was previously considered unattainable.

25. OG, Virtus.pro, Invictus Gaming, PSG.LGD, and Team Secret (all champions) played cowardly against Team Spirit. Yes, because Spirit's playstyle is like that. Inadequate, defiant. When there is no area on the map where the opponent can feel safe. That's why there were comebacks. That's why there were overturns. That's why there were so many morale victories.

26. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Team Spirit after winning the Grand Final. As The International has become too noticeable and significant, an event that it is impossible not to notice. A few years ago, the Prime Minister of Denmark congratulated Astralis after winning the major. And the President of Finland invited Topson and JerAx to his reception after winning the TI. It is also good that the statements of Russian deputies and public figures have not been seen in China. Then their eyes would pop out of their heads.

Well, in general, this "exposure" is the indignation of Chinese fans who are trying to justify the unexpected defeat of their team. There is not a single argument proving the conspiracy theory and there cannot be. Team Spirit is incredible and has earned everything it has now through its hard work.