SG Esports had already conquered a titan in Team Secret, and just a day later, the team found itself facing another giant in Evil Geniuses. Though the underdog didn't overcome the odds this time, the match between these two was a barnburner.

Last weekend's Kiev Major crowned OG as a four-time Majors winner and celebrated the CIS region's Dota 2 history. After the closing ceremony, however, the last thing viewers saw was an unexplained montage of women simply watching the matches, a segment fans believe is detrimental to inclusiveness in Dota.

Team Random, better known as the former Wings Gaming, will disband prior to this year's International.

OG might have been favourites heading into Valve's Dota 2 Major hosted in Kiev, but they certainly didn't look it by game five of the grand finals. Arguably the more talented team, and certainly the more experienced, it wasn't until a fateful team fight in the 39th minute of the final match that the European squad re-discovered their inner champions.

It's not often you see upsets like the one that happened today in Kiev, Ukraine, where the lowest seed of the tournament not only pushed the top seed to a game three, but eliminated them altogether.

The four-month gap the Boston and Kiev Majors in Dota 2 has been especially vacuous, as precious few tournaments gave fans a chance to gauge each team's potential headed into this week's Kiev Major group stage play. After Boston it seemed like TNC Pro Team was in disarray, but Kiev is showing that just might not be true.

The upcoming Kiev Major is one of the most important tournaments of the Dota season, a big tournament in its own right, and an important qualifier for the multi-million dollar International, Dota's equal part World Cup and Super Bowl. But if you haven't been plugged into the Dota community for the last few months, you're not likely to recognise some of the teams playing in Kiev.

Dota 2 uses terrain height in a unique way: Depending on the distance, it can cause attacks to miss, provide a vision advantage, or in this case, trap an enemy player on a cliff for a long, long time.

The regional qualifiers for the next Dota 2 major have been exciting, with over 100 matches played in the last 48 hours. The Kiev Major boasts a prize pool of $US3 ($4) million, and so everybody and their grandmother has been competing to earn a spot, including one team that made a desperate move to Southeast Asia to do so.

The qualifying system for Dota 2's majors has its roots in an egalitarian impulse where -- theoretically -- a team of amateurs could win an open and then regional qualifier, and find themselves competing in a major against professionals. But for the upcoming Kiev Major, that egalitarian ideal ran smack dab into the reality of tournaments with only one or zero teams signing up for the Champion's Cups, and a team of commentators conceding in a final because they were accidentally winning.

After missing December's Boston Major and struggling the past few months to stay abreast of a tough European Dota 2 scene, it looked like Team Liquid might have to go through the gauntlet of European qualifying for the upcoming Kiev Major. Performing well at the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season Three finals was their best hope at avoiding such a fate.