Two days into the BLAST Slam VII group stage and the picture already carries weight. Twelve teams, a round-robin of Bo1s running through Friday, and only four direct slots to the LAN playoffs in Copenhagen on June 4-7. The rest is tiebreakers, last-chance qualifiers, and early flights home for the bottom two. After six matches per team across Tuesday and Wednesday, the BLAST Slam VII standings paint a group that is simultaneously top-heavy and wide open.
The DM Effect Is Real
Team Yandex sit alone at 3-0, the only undefeated squad in the tournament. That by itself would be worth a paragraph. But the context makes it a storyline.
Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin was officially announced as Yandex’s new offlaner on May 24, two days before the first game. Noticed moved to the inactive list after months of rumors about the swap. DM had already stood in for the team at PGL Wallachia Season 7 (where they won the whole event) and Season 8 (where they flopped in groups), so the chemistry is not a mystery. Still, making it permanent on the eve of a Tier 1 event is a statement.
The opening-day results backed it up. Yandex dismantled Team Spirit in 34 minutes on Radiant, then outlasted PARIVISION in a 52-minute slugfest on Dire, and finished by stomping Team Liquid in 28 minutes. Three games, three different tempos, all three wins. The Spirit and Liquid victories are the ones that matter for seeding implications: both are direct rivals for a top-four finish, and both lost convincingly.
DM’s presence changes Yandex’s entire draft philosophy. With Noticed on the roster, the team’s offlane was functional but predictable. DM brings lane dominance and a hero pool that lets watson and CHIRA_JUNIOR play greedier without worrying about the left side of the map collapsing. Two days in, the combination of Saksa at pos 4 and DM at pos 3 gives Yandex arguably the most versatile 3-4 pairing at the tournament.
Whether Team Yandex can sustain this through the remaining days of Bo1s is the real question. They still have Tundra, Aurora, BetBoom, and GLYPH on the schedule. But for now, the Dota 2 community is watching a team that looks locked in.
Five Teams, One Record, Zero Comfort
Below Yandex, the group stage compression is severe. BetBoom Team, GLYPH, LGD Gaming, PARIVISION, and Team Falcons all sit at 2-1. In a Bo1 round-robin with tiebreakers decided by Neustadtl score, the difference between second place and sixth could come down to a single draft gone wrong on Day 4.
GLYPH are the surprise package. The Southeast Asian qualifier winners arrived as the least-known entity in the field, and their opening-day upset over Falcons set the tone. A second win followed before Liquid brought them back to earth. For a team playing its first Tier 1 event, holding a 2-1 record after two days is an achievement worth monitoring. Their Day 3 matchup against PARIVISION will say a lot about whether this is genuine quality or early-tournament adrenaline fading.
LGD Gaming are another narrative worth tracking. The former HEROIC roster now plays under the iconic Chinese banner, making this LGD’s return to competitive Dota 2 after a two-year absence. The South American core, featuring Wisper and Yuma, showed quality against Aurora and BetBoom on Day 1, and their 2-1 record reflects a team that can compete at this level. The loss to Liquid was the only hiccup, and even that game had moments where LGD looked like they belonged.
PARIVISION, with Puppey coaching and No[o]ne in the mid lane, sit comfortably at 2-1 despite dropping the Yandex game. Their two wins came against Tundra and BetBoom, both clean executions of structured Dota. The Day 3 schedule puts them against GLYPH and BetBoom again, which means PARI could either solidify a top-four push or slide back into the pack by Thursday evening.
Falcons at 2-1 will satisfy nobody inside that organization, because the one loss came against GLYPH. Dropping a Bo1 to the tournament’s least-established team raises questions about preparation, especially when you consider that Falcons took clean wins over Aurora and Xtreme Gaming on the same day. Inconsistency in Bo1 formats is a known problem for roster-stacked teams that rely on series adjustments, and Falcons fit that profile.
Defending Champions in Trouble
Team Liquid at 1-2 should alarm anyone who had them penciled into the top four. The BLAST Slam VI champions and defending title holders opened with a win over Yandex’s arch-rival Spirit on Day 1, then dropped both Wednesday games to Tundra and Yandex. The Tundra loss was particularly rough: a 28-10 kill scoreline that suggested Liquid were outread from the draft screen.
Liquid’s schedule for the final two days includes Aurora, GLYPH, OG, and Falcons. Winnable on paper, but this team has already shown that paper means little in this group. They need to go at least 3-1 from here to have a realistic shot at a direct playoff spot, and even that might not be enough depending on tiebreakers.
Team Spirit share the 1-2 record and the same uncomfortable reality. The DreamLeague Season 29 third-place finishers started by losing to Yandex in 34 minutes, a game where the draft felt one-dimensional and the laning stage was over before it began. Spirit recovered with a Day 1 win but then dropped another match on Day 2. For a roster that was supposed to enter this event with momentum from their DreamLeague run, the early stumble is concerning.
Tundra Esports and Aurora Gaming round out the 1-2 tier. Tundra’s form has declined since their ESL One Birmingham title in March. Four consecutive championships (BLAST Slam IV, V, DreamLeague Season 28, Birmingham) had the team looking untouchable, but the DreamLeague Season 29 run ended in a 5th-6th finish, and the opening two days of BLAST Slam VII have continued that downward trajectory. Aurora’s roster, built around Nightfall and the mixed CIS-SEA core with Ws on the offlane, has flashed quality but lacks the consistency to string results together in a round-robin format.
Xtreme Gaming, the Chinese squad with Ame and NothingToSay, also sit at 1-2. Internal instability and coaching changes have plagued the team in recent months, and the group stage has done nothing to suggest those issues are resolved.
OG: The Experiment Unraveling
And then there is OG at 0-3.
The Filipino roster signed in November 2025 was supposed to bring Southeast Asian fire to one of esports’ most storied brands. Yopaj in mid, Natsumi on carry, Tims and skem in the support duo, all coached by 343. When TORONTOTOKYO replaced Nikko on the offlane in April, the move was framed as the missing piece: a TI-winning veteran to provide structure and late-game shotcalling for a squad that had been leaking leads for months.
Two events later, the experiment is trending in the wrong direction. OG’s 0-3 start at BLAST Slam VII includes losses to Xtreme Gaming, BetBoom, and Yandex. None of the three defeats were competitive enough to inspire hope. The team that Ceb promised would bring SEA its first championship is now staring at 11th-12th place and outright elimination from the tournament.
The TORONTOTOKYO signing always carried risk. A Russian offlaner integrating into an all-Filipino squad, playing from Southeast Asia, communicating across a language gap that no amount of professionalism can entirely bridge. Add the fact that TT’s form at Aurora before the move was itself inconsistent, and the question becomes less about whether this lineup can click and more about whether OG has the time to let it.
Day 3 brings OG against BetBoom and Tundra. Neither is an easy win at 0-3 confidence levels. If OG drop both, they are mathematically at risk of elimination before the final day.
What Day 3 and Day 4 Will Decide
Sixteen matches are scheduled for Thursday (Day 3), and the group wraps up Friday (May 29). The seeding implications are enormous:
Top 4 advances directly to the LAN playoffs at BLAST Studios in BLAST Slam VII Copenhagen (June 4-7, double elimination, Bo3/Bo5 grand final). 5th-6th drops to LCQ Round 2. 7th-10th starts in LCQ Round 1. 11th-12th is eliminated outright.
| Position | Record | Teams |
| 1st | 3-0 | Team Yandex |
| T2nd | 2-1 | BetBoom, GLYPH, LGD, PARIVISION, Falcons |
| T7th | 1-2 | Aurora, Liquid, Spirit, Tundra, Xtreme Gaming |
| 12th | 0-3 | OG |
The key Day 3 matchups to watch: Falcons vs Spirit (both need wins for opposite reasons), Aurora vs Liquid (the loser starts planning for LCQ), GLYPH vs PARIVISION (qualifier darlings against Puppey’s disciplined system), and Yandex vs Tundra (can anyone stop the DM-powered CIS machine?).
The CIS contingent dominates the upper half of this table. Yandex at 3-0, PARIVISION at 2-1, BetBoom at 2-1. Add Falcons (who field a mixed roster with CIS roots in their coaching staff) and you have four of the top six slots held by teams with deep connections to the post-Soviet Dota ecosystem. For a scene that spent years being told it was declining after Team Spirit’s TI10 win, BLAST Slam VII is shaping up as a showcase for exactly how wrong that narrative was.
The group finishes tomorrow. The standings will look different by Friday night. But the stories that defined the opening two days, Yandex’s perfect start with DM, OG’s freefall, Liquid’s title defense going sideways, GLYPH’s debut disruption, those will echo into the playoffs regardless of how the final seeding shakes out.
