Team Aster vs LBZS: The Sun will quit after the first match on stage

The Intel World Open Beijing in China will continue on Friday, January 21. Team Aster and LBZS will meet in the event's first leg, a head-to-head encounter.

The Intel World Open Beijing is a Dota 2 lantern tournament held in China from January 19-22, 2022. Eight Chinese teams will compete for $300,000 and the title of champions. With the cancellation of the majors, this tournament has been a good substitute for Chinese players, especially in the run-up to the New Year for their country.

Team Aster: Outnumbered but not hurt

Team Aster is a long way from full strength for their first match on the stage. Three of the players can still return to China after their TI10 trip to Romania in October. The Chinese players Monet, Xxs and BoBoKa are currently in Indonesia in an isolation hotel. They are playing with an unpleasant ping, but that doesn't stop Team Aster from quietly beating any opponent in the DPC league except PSG.LGD.

In 2022, they lost twice 1-2 to just the TI10 vice-champions - once at the DPC league, and the second just at this tournament. In the first match at the Intel World Open Beijing, the Aster team quietly dealt with the resistance of their youth team. Aster.Aries was able to take the map, which only PSG.LGD managed to do it in January. The Aster players wanted to get even with the TI10 vice-champions, but they knocked them out into the loser's bracket, through which the favourite would make its way to the final without a margin for error.

Team Aster is one of China's youngest teams, formed in late 2018 and already top of their region. Last season was a mixed bag for the boys. If you judge their results within the Chinese region, they are very cool: vice-champions of the first DPC league, champions of the second DPC league, champions of two i-League 2021 seasons. Not even PSG.LGD can boast such results in China, but on the international scene, Aster played just awful: only 9-12 places in the two majors in Singapore and Kyiv, an unsatisfactory result at TI10 as well - 13-16 place. You can look for excuses, they did not perform in the full squad in Singapore, and at TI10, the whole team suffered from coronavirus, but the fact is that no one makes concessions to the top Chinese team.

Something had to be done, and the organisation's bosses made two substitutions in the squad. Ori from Vici Gaming will play as two, and Siamese.C who spent the last season in the Aster.Aries youth team will take position five. And if the first substitution is strengthening, the second is ambiguous, although the five is not the most key position, it's too bad that the young player was quite good during last season. The games already held show that Aster continues to be one of the most formidable Chinese teams even after substitutions. It's a pity that we can't see this team in the majors now.

LBZS: A day on stage and out

The LBZS team made it to this tournament through the qualifying tournament. On the whole, the Suns have had a successful January, maintaining their place in the elite DPC league division and qualifying for the Lan phase of this Intel World Open Beijing tournament. LBZS is unlucky with their opponents as it would have been much easier to play Vici or Invictus than Aster, who they lost to without a chance in this month's DPC league match.

LBZS is a young tier-3 team from China, formed in late 2020. They started last season in the elite of the Chinese DPC league but failed to win a single match there and went straight to Division 2, where they could earn the right to re-take the title in the second DPC league season 2021.

This team takes part in many tournaments and quite successfully, but the squad changes frequently. It changed again before the start of the new DPC cycle, with four new players at once: Kagome, Pyue, Molasses and detachment. The only unchanged player is CatYou, who has been with the team for more than a year, or to be more precise, since its formation.

Expert Betting Tips

Team Aster will win this match with a handicap (-1.5) on the maps; the odds are 1.53. The teams are too different in their skills, as they showed in the DPC league, and the favorites won't be able to fool around with the team as they are one step away from relegation.

The second map will last less than 36.5 minutes; the odds are 1.73.