Team SMG vs Motivate.Trust Gaming: a battle for crucial points with an unpredictable result

South-East Asia's first DPC league of the 2021/22 season continues on Saturday, December 11. Team SMG and Motivate.Trust Gaming will meet in the second matchday of the elite division.

DPC SEA 2021/22 Tour 1: Division I is an online Dota 2 tournament that will run from December 01, 2021, to January 22, 2022. The top eight teams from the SEA 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 crucial DPC points needed to qualify for T11.

Team SMG’s first match in the elite turned out to be extremely successful. Defeating Fnatic on two maps in less than 30 minutes was a sensation. Now they will be up against a major red-boss in the form of T1, and with such a game SMG may surprise the TI10 participant.

Team SMG have some stellar Malaysian players at their disposal who could easily strengthen any Tier-1 team in Southeast Asia, but they can't get to the result so far in the current stack. The MidOne and Moon nicknames carry a lot of weight in the region.

This team was seen by some experts as possible winners of the Asian qualifiers for the IT, this further underlines the level of stellar characters at some of the positions. But after failing to qualify for the main tournament of the year, the boys began to play in a large number of low-rated tournaments, sometimes kicking outright horror there, and at times even winning such games.

The squad has been playing together for a long time, the only change before the start of the DPC league the new season was the arrival of the only Filipino, Raging Potato, who has experience of playing in several ITs and has mainly played for Execration and Neon in the last few years. What awaits the team in this league is difficult to say, as it is their first appearance in the Asian elite, but the team should not become the whipping boys.

MTG, debutants in the elite division, started their new DPC cycle with wins over TNC (2-0) and Execration (2-0). These teams are their immediate and close opponents, but the boys proved that they are ready to go head-to-head here and now. Already at the end of the first league game week, I can safely state the fact that MTG will not fight for survival here, and whether they will fight for a slot in the majors will show just this game with SMG - their direct and main competitor.

Motivate.Trust Gaming is one of the most interesting Asian teams that had a chance to break through to the int, considering their results at the beginning of the last summer of 2021, but in the end, they failed in the int and the BTS tournament that took place at the end of summer. In season 7 they were in 6th place but in season 8 they managed to finish in the top 3 of the championship.

The main star of the squad is carry JaCkky who joined the squad from T1 in March after upping his MMR to 12K. The guy from Laos has shown an unbelievable game, blowing everyone by farming speed and button-pushing on his heroes.

The squad hasn’t changed since the summer, now the guys are showing up well at Tier-4 tournaments: Moon Studio Asian Tigers and PNX Invitational, which was a great warm-up before the ninth season of BTS and of course before the upcoming new DPC season. The BTS boys finished in 3rd place and approached the DPC in as good a shape as possible.

The past BTS with the participation of SMG has shown that they are a head above MTG. In general, both teams still can not allocate in the top region SEA, but each other they are worthy and at the same level of play. You can bet on SMG’s victory in this confrontation for 1.88.

Two maps aren’t enough for such a game, so Total Over 2.5 maps is a classy option for 1.93.

For the big odds fans, you can take a chance and bet on the correct score of the match - 2-1 in favour of SMG for 3.10.