Team Yandex, a six-month-old team, captures its first tournament victory in Dota 2’s last tier 1 competition for 2025.
Fresh off a grand final loss to Tundra Esports at BLAST SLAM V, Team Yandex bounced back at DreamLeague Season 27 by defeating Team Spirit 3–1 in a best-of-five (Bo5) series.
Despite losing Game 1 to Team Spirit’s Ravage and Cataclysm combo, the standout team from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region held its ground and bounced back by winning Games 2, 3, and 4 in commanding fashion.
The team showcased its versatile hero pool, drafting a variety of heroes such as Tidehunter, Shadow Shaman, Tiny, Viper, and Phantom Assassin to secure consecutive victories throughout the series. Team Yandex’s midlaner, Ilya “CHIRA_JUNIOR” Chirtsov, stood out in particular, using Tiny to toss Team Spirit’s heroes into awkward positions during teamfights.
Banning Team Spirit’s Invoker
When asked about how Team Yandex discussed their strategy against Team Spirit, position 5 player Arman “Malady” Orazbayev revealed that it was a collective team effort. He added that they made a deliberate decision to keep Denis “Larl” Sigitov’s Invoker banned, given how impactful its Cataclysm was in the first game.
“I think we discussed it as a team. We decided to do the same thing as we did *yesterday, but they surprised us with their Invoker. So, it got like quick change of plans [sic] for the second and third game [sic]. We just decided to ban Invoker for every game.”
*Malady is referring to their upper bracket final series the day before the grand finals, which was also against Team Spirit.
Apart from Malady and CHIRA_JUNIOR, Team Yandex is composed of other high-ranked players, such as the former Gaimin Gladiators carry Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov, Tundra Esports’ inactive position 4 and TI 11 winner Martin "Saksa" Sazdov, and ex-Virtus.pro offlaner Evgeniy "Noticed" Ignatenko.
DreamLeague Season 27 results
Here are the final standings of all the teams who participated in DreamLeague Season 27. Take note that the top 6 teams in this tournament received direct invites to two upcoming tier 1 tournaments next year: ESL One Birmingham 2026 and DreamLeague Season 28.
Keep an eye out for these top teams if you want to stake money on some of the best esports betting platforms around:
- Champion: Team Yandex
- Runner-up: Team Spirit
- 3rd placer: PARIVISION
- 4th placer: Xtreme Gaming
- 5th-6th placers: OG and Tundra Esports
- 7th-8th placers: Virtus.pro and Team Falcons
- 9th-16th placers: BetBoom Team, Team Liquid, Natus Vincere, Runa Team, MOUZ, Nigma Galaxy, Team Tidebound, Pipsqueak+4
- 17th-21st placers: Amaru Gaming, Aurora Gaming, Team Nemesis, GamerLegion, HEROIC
- 22nd-24th placers: Passion UA, 1w Team, Yakult Brothers
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