TI 2023 Group Stage predictions: Which could be the four teams going home early?

The International (TI) 2023, this year's Dota 2 world championship tournament, has finally released the group draw for its Group Stage — or the Road to The International Group Stage, to be more precise.

With this year's new format making the group draw more important than in previous events, things are looking spicy. Here are the groups for TI 2023's Road to The International Group Stage:

How does TI 2023's Group Stage work?

The Group Stage is split into two phases, with the first taking place from 12 to 13 October while the second will be hosted from 14 to 15 October.

The first phase of the Group Stage will split the 20 participating teams into four groups of five teams each, who will then go through a single round-robin with best-of-two matches. The bottom team of each group will be eliminated after the first phase while the remaining 16 teams will advance to the second phase.

The second phase of the Group Stage will have the remaining teams play in eight head-to-head, best-of-three matches to determine placement in the Main Event.

In this phase, the Top 2 teams from each group in phase one will get matched with either the third or fourth-placed teams from the opposite group. To clarify, the Top 2 teams from Group A will be matched against the third and fourth-placed teams from Group C while Group B's will face Group D's.

The winners of the eight head-to-head matches will then earn upper bracket berths in the Playoffs while the losers will have to start from the lower bracket.

Who will make it out of the Group Stage?

Four teams, one out of each group, will be eliminated in the first phase of the Group Stage while the rest will get to advance to the Road to The International's Playoff phase. In this new format, which seed teams end up getting won't matter as much as simply avoiding early elimination.

So, which teams will advance and which ones will have their TI campaigns end before it even really begun? Here are our predictions:

Group A

Group A is looking like one of the more stacked groups of the Group Stage, featuring three directly-invited teams in TI 2021 champions Team Spirit, Eastern European powerhouse 9Pandas, and South America's Evil Geniuses (EG). Rounding out the group are qualifier teams Entity from Western Europe and Team SMG from Southeast Asia.

Spirit are heavy favourites to finish atop the standings of Group A, having won the last two big events before TI at Riyadh Masters 2023 in July and DreamLeague Season 21 in September. We also expect 9Pandas and Entity to put up strong performances, leaving EG and Team SMG as the likely candidates to be eliminated early from Group A.

Despite earning a direct invite, EG has struggled mightily in the tournaments they attended leading up to TI. In July, they bombed out of the Bali Major in 17th-18th place and finished 9th-12th in Riyadh Masters. September didn't look good for them either, as they only managed 5th-6th out of eight teams in BetBoom Dacha and 9th-10th out of 12 teams in DreamLeague Season 21.

While Team SMG looked dominant in the Southeast Asian regional qualifier, they will be playing at TI with Ivan "MinD_ControL" Ivanov as a stand-in after Natthaphon "Masaros" Ouanphakdee was unable to acquire a visa in time.

EG may be the stronger of the two teams on paper, but we're leaning more towards SMG on this. With all due respect to Masaros, MinD_ControL is the better player and has proven TI experience — let's not forget that he did win TI 2017 and finished second in TI 2019. Having a prolific coach in Lee "Heen" Seung Gon as another stand-in should help SMG's case too.

To be clear, EG is no slouch, but their recent struggles understandbly cast doubts on whether or not they'll be able to perform at TI.

TL;DR: Team Spirit, 9Pandas, Entity, Team SMG advance, Evil Geniuses eliminated

Group B

Many consider Group B to be this TI's 'group of death', as four out of the five teams there are either considered as favourites or contenders to claim the Aegis of Champions. With that said, I don't think you can really call it the group of death when it's clear which teams are advancing.

Those four are Western Europe's Team Liquid, North America's Shopify Rebellion, Eastern Europe's BetBoom Team, and China's Azure Ray. That leaves South American qualifier team Thunder Awaken as the most likely team to be eliminated from Group B.

There should be no need to get too in-depth on why we predict Group B will turn out this way, the rest of the group is simply levels above Thunder Awaken even if they don't perform their best. Sure, South American squads are known to sometimes punch above their weight at TI, but it's hard to say that will happen again this time around.

TL;DR: Team Liquid, Shopify Rebellion, BetBoom Team, Azure Ray advance, Thunder Awaken eliminated

Group C

Group C is probably the most top-heavy group this year, with three-time Major champions Gaimin Gladiators the heavy favourites to claim the top seed. Chinese powerhouse LGD Gaming should take the second spot, after which there's a significant drop-off in quality of teams.

We expect South America's Beastcoast, North America's Nouns Esports, and Eastern Europe's Virtus.pro (VP) to be relatively evenly-matched and thus get locked in a struggle to avoid elimination. In this three-way dogfight, we predict the squads from the Americas to win out over Eastern Europe's qualifier team.

The VP squad in this year's TI is a far cry from the ones that won multiple Majors in years past, as it is mostly comprised of young and inexperienced players captained by veteran Artsiom "Fng" Barshak.

In contrast, Beastcoast has been a fixture in Majors and at TI for years now. Nouns also has its fair share of veterans, including former Beastcoast carry Héctor "K1" Rodríguez and TI 2016 runner-up David "Moo" Hull.

This isn't to say that VP is less talented than Beastcoast or Nouns, they're talented enough to get to TI after all. But in this high-stakes, high-pressure environment, history has shown that experience often trumps raw talent. We expect the same outcome for Group C as VP will be the one eliminated.

TL;DR: Gaimin Gladiators, LGD Gaming, Beastcoast, Nouns Esports advance, Virtus.pro eliminated

Group D

Group D is very similar to Group B in that it has four teams that are very likely to advance and one South American team that is very likely to get eliminated.

Just so we're clear, the four teams that should advance out of Group D are TI 2021 champions Tundra Esports (who are also reinforced by two-time TI champion Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen, by the way), Southeast Asian powerhouse Talon Esports, the newly-minted PSG.Quest, and North American stalwarts TSM.

Unfortunately for South American qualifier team Vivo Keyd Stars, it's hard to imagine they'll be able to keep up against such strong competition. Their closest competition will probably be TSM, but the North Americans are still looking like a tier above them after their second place finish at BetBoom Dacha.

So yeah, things aren't looking good for South America at this year's TI. But hey, at least they were able to get five teams here, that has to count for something.

TL;DR: Tundra Esports, Talon Esports, PSG.Quest, TSM advance, Vivo Keyd Stars eliminated

TI 2023 will be hosted from 12 to 29 October in Seattle, the United States and will see 20 of the best Dota 2 teams in the world fighting to claim the coveted Aegis of Champions and the lion's share of a growing prize pool.

For everything you need to know about TI 2023, check here.

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