Solo Takes a Vacation for the Rest of the Year, ArtStyle Steps In

After a disappointing elimination from DreamLeague Season 8 major, the captain of Virtus.pro Alexei "Solo" Berezin decides to take a break for the rest of the year. In the meantime, he will be replaced by the team’s coach Ivan "Artstyle" Antonov.

In the new Dota 2 season Valve introduced a Dota 2 Circuit, which includes minor and major tournaments financed by Valve and, above all things, these tournaments give their participants Qualifiers Points towards The International 2018. This change made the scene more structured and in general was welcomed by the community, but the fact that there are 11 majors and 16 minors raised questions – is it too much for both players and viewers? The idea was probably to incentivize top teams to take part mainly in the majors, while tier-2 and tier-3 teams would participate in minors. But the reality was different – most of the teams tried to take part in every possible tournament to get the desired qualifier points, and Virtus.pro was no exception. The champions of the previous major tournament ESL One Hamburg 2017 have had a tough schedule lately – after The International they participated in almost every possible tournament of the Dota 2 Pro Circuit. Yesterday they lost 0-2 to Evil Geniuses in the lower bracket of DreamLeague Season 8 and placed 5-6th, which is not the result they hoped for.

A little bit later it was announced that Alexei "Solo" Berezin, the captain of the team, will take a break for a month and won’t participate in the upcoming MDL Macau and The Summit 8, instead he will be temporary replaced by the team’s coach Ivan "Artstyle" Antonov.

Virtus.pro General Manager Roman Dvoryankin commented on the situation:

The last few months have been quite eventful for our team. After the end of The International 2017 our team had a two-week vacation. Then they moved to a bootcamp where they lived for 3 months if we leave tournament dates out. A lot of official and practice matches were played throughout this period and it couldn't but take a toll on physical and emotional state of the players. So, after the end of this major Alexei "Solo" Berezin and I decided that it's in the best interest of the team to play with ArtStyle instead of Alexei in Macau and LA. Alexei will take a short vacation for the rest of the year. In January, we will return to our usual lineup to play in Manila and Genting.

Virtus.pro Roster

• Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev
• Vladimir " No[o]ne " Minenko
• Pavel "9Pasha" Khvastunov
• Ilya "Lil" Ilyuk
• Alexei "Solo" Berezin (captain)
• Ivan "Artstyle" Antonov (coach)