T1 vs Team SMG Prediction: No easy game for the favorite

The third match week of the third round of the South East Asia Regional DPC Dota 2 League will kick off on Wednesday, June 22. The second match of the regular game day will be played between T1 and Team SMG.

DPC SEA 2021/2022 Tour 3: Division I is an online Dota 2 tournament that will run from June 08 to July 14, 2022. The top eight teams from the Southeast Asian region will battle it out for $205,000. On top of the cash prizes, the teams will also fight for three entries to the majors and the all-important DPC points needed to qualify for T11.

T1 has continued to make waves this summer. One defeat, the other a convincing victory. T1's first game of the summer tour was a bit awkward. The favorites lost the match to a player from the second division, once again emphasizing their decline in play, which is simply visible to the naked eye. The same start the lads had in the spring, so we shouldn't be too surprised. Fortunately, in the spring, T1 was quickly included and took the top 3. This summer, it is desirable to start with the game against Nigma Galaxy SEA, which the team T1 did, defeating their opponents 2-0, but so far the game favorites do not seem something extremely confident.

After their successful showing at The International 2021 (7th-8th place), the T1 team has been consistently ranked in the top 3 of their region, but with each round, it becomes more and more difficult to stay in the lead. At the end of the winter and spring rounds of the regional league, T1 was third in the table. In winter, they finished second in the Regional Finals, and in spring, they went to the Majors in Sweden, where they performed rather poorly because many people are used to T1 doing well in the lanes and in Europe in general. But that was before TI10...

After a disappointing departure (9-12th place) from the majors, the players returned home to rest. It is unlikely that any of them spent much time preparing strategies ahead of the not-so-important tour. However, the summer DPC points are needed for the team to definitely not worry about their participation in TI11.

T1 didn't start the DPC league in the spring, so I don't expect a perfect Dota on the favorites' first or second map. You can see that this T1 squad is tired, and the guys' results are declining. A radical change is coming, but most likely, the bosses of the organization will hold it only after TI11, where the result in the major can already be perceived as unsatisfactory, and the tournament will be held in Singapore in front of the native audience.

SMG started the summer tour with a defeat at the hands of BOOM (1-2), although in that cycle of match events, the boys could have taken the match as an asset. But BOOM is among the favorites, so this defeat is not so critical against the backdrop of SMG's worsening results in the elite. Next up was a routine win over Polaris Esports (2-0), who is now weakened by substitutions and will likely be the first team to leave the elite ranks at the end of this summer. The game against T1 will show whether, in this final round, Team SMG is capable of fighting for the top 3 of their region.

Team SMG performed well over the winter, especially if you remember that the team was then the debutant of the elite Asian division. Fourth place at the end of the first round of the league, third place after the regional finals. Yes, that's not a lot of DPC points, but let's remember that this, at the time, was an elite debutant.

Therefore, this team can safely be called the strongest debutant of the elite last winter. After their, in my opinion, successful debut in the first division, the boys could not continue in the same vein, and the SMG team finished the spring second round in sixth place, which clearly did not add any points to DPC. With the team's results deteriorating, position five was replaced, with the Swede pieliedie moving to SEA, having played in Europe and repeatedly in Asia and America.

Team SMG has several star players from Malaysia who could easily strengthen any Southeast Asian tier-1 team but can't get to the result in the current stack yet. The MidOne and Moon nicknames carry a lot of weight in the region. The squad has been playing together for quite some time. The only change before the start of the first round of the DPC league of the new season is the arrival of the only Filipino, Raging Potato, who has experience playing on several TIs and has mainly played for Execration and Neon in the last few years. In June 2022, a new Swedish five pieliedie arrived.

The game promises to be a close one, so I suggest betting on Total Over 2.5 maps for 2.21.

For those who don't want to take too much risk, you can try to catch odds of 1.80 on a handicap 2 (+1.5) on the maps. This team should easily take away one map from not the most stable T1s nowadays.

The correct score of the meeting is 2-1 in favor of T1; the odds on that are 3.16.

TelecomAsia Sport is looking for a Qatar-based video blogger to work during the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Contact jobs@telecomasia.net for more information.