Painful counterfactuals stalk even the best athletes. On Monday, Manchester United star Paul Pogba missed an easy penalty, dooming his team to a 1-1 draw against a lesser opponent. Last night, a Dota 2 player tried to ban a particular hero from the match, but ended up selecting him instead.

We’re just days away from the biggest Dota 2 event of the year, the annual International tournament with its $49 million prize pool. Normally, this would be a time of celebration, but throughout the group stages leading into the August 20 main event, hardly anybody in Twitch chat has been talking about the games.

Instead, fans have been in an uproar over Valve’s decision to host the International in Shanghai while protests rage in Hong Kong.

"I'm ready to win. I'm ready to lose. I'm ready for everything," said OG coach and offlaner, Sébastien "7ckngMad" Debs, before facing off against PSG.LGD in the grand finals of The International 2018.

Valve's most recent entry in the True Sight documentary series shows just how ready Debs was with a unique view from inside the teams' booth.

The International 2018 ends tomorrow. By day’s end, over $US25 million ($34 million) will be divided up among 18 teams from around the world with the lion’s share, $US11.1 million ($15 million), going to first place. Whoever that turns out to be at this point, though, will be a team almost nobody saw coming.

The tournament for Valve’s action strategy game Dota 2 saw favourites crushed and underdogs rise up in the first day of matches, and the shocking upsets haven’t stopped since.

The International is full of high-stakes gameplay. Between the games there's skits, panel discussions and the occasional announcement. Announcements like a Gabe Newell mega-kills announcer probably doesn't have anything to say when a Triple Kill happens.

At Valve, everything happens in Valve Time — even fans learning to appreciate new games, apparently.

The International 2018 officially got underway this week and surprise, there were a number of problems with various streaming feeds going down in the middle of the Dota 2 matches. Valve sent out a tweet last night apologising for the outages, but given how big and lucrative the event is, it still feels like the company should have their shit more together by now.

Just before midnight on 10 August 2016, I jumped up from my seat screaming at the top of my lungs about Dota 2. I wasn’t even playing the game myself, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it on the level of the players I watched that night.

In a Dota 2 match that remains one of the most dramatic ever played in the game’s history, Evil Geniuses and EHOME played their asses off for 75 minutes, only for one to strike a surprise deathblow in the 76th.

Dota 2’s annual championship, The International, has the biggest prize pool in all of esports – $US21 ($28) million and counting.

As Valve does every year, the prize pool for the Dota 2 International is backed by the seemingly unending generosity of fans opening their wallets for the Battle Pass. This year is no different: funding has already exceeded $US20 million ($27 million), and there's still over a month and a half left to go.

When Juan "Atuun" Ochoa was accused of cheating at Dota 2, he was playing one of its most complicated heroes, a grotesque-looking gnome who can clone himself, trying to help his team win the South American qualifiers for the 2018 International. Ochoa's actions resulted in his team being disqualified, its dreams of attending August's $US14.7 million ($20 million) prize pool tournament shattered.

The team denies any cheating took place, although its explanation doesn't seem entirely waterproof.

The North American open qualifiers for the 2018 Dota 2 International were off to the races yesterday, with dozens of games being played to determine who would take a regional spot. And then along came a patch containing Dota 2's new battle royale mode, and everything fell apart.

The players on Team Liquid just won the most money for a single match in the history of esports, but at the staged champagne celebration they stumbled around like sleep deprived zombies.

Go champions recently had their butts handed to them by Google's AlphaGo. If you thought video games might be safe from sophisticated AI challengers, at least for now, the bad news is the apocalypse is already here, with Dota 2 pro Danil "Dendi" Ishutin getting smashed one-on-one by OpenAI's Dota 2 bot.

This is the panel for the Group Stage of the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year. The one that's sponsored by Valve and has a prize pool of nearly $US24 ($30) million. I think it's time the multi-billion dollar company splurged on some upgrades.

Dota 2 commentator Henrik "AdmiralBulldog" Ahnberg was tapped to provide live commentary for The International 7, one of the world's biggest annual esports tournaments. This year, TI7's prize pool climbed to a historic $US23 million ($29 million), the largest in esports history. Unfortunately, Ahnberg won't be at the event after being turned away at the United States border.

This year's International has broken the record for largest prize pool in esports at over $US20,700,460 ($26,772,981) and still climbing. That record was set by last year's International, which broke a record set by the previous year's. This presents a mystery to the uninitiated: Exactly where is all this money coming from?

For the first time in Dota 2 history, there will be no defending champion at this year's International (barring the very first).

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