Russian players from Virtus.pro, Na'Vi and Team Spirit will compete under the #antihype tag
Virtus.pro's trio Alexei "Solo" Berezin, Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev, Pavel "9Pasha" Hvastunov, and also Na'Vi's Vladimir "RodjER" Nikogosyan and Team Spirit's Igor "iltw" Filatov have joined "AntiHype" ranks, and will play in the World Electronic Sports Games' 2017 national qualifier stage.
National qualification games will be held on 7th of October, and two best teams will proceed to the regional qualifiers in Barcelona. Tournament's grand-finals will take place in China 2018, and WESG 2017's DOTA 2 prize pool will exceed $1,5 Million.
Roman Dvoryakin, VP general manager: "Limited player pool was the toughest problem we had to address. Unlike Ukraine, Russia doesn't have that many high-level players. We were also restricted in terms of player roles and upcoming tournaments with the participation of our guys. Due to that, the reveal had to be slightly postponed. Until the very last moment, we were tackling the roster difficulties.
All players will take their usual positions – except iltw – he'll play on mid, despite having a different role in Team Spirit. Russia's qualifiers are going to be challenging – our guys will charge head-on into a whole day of matches. Let's hope we'll proceed to Barcelona and stand our ground against other strong European teams. My special thanks go to WESG organizers as they immensely helped us out by postponing the national qualifiers – initial terms were physically impossible for our team.
After Team Ukraine's first stage success, there was a lot of friendly banter inside Virtus.pro. They really do play against each other often – it can be a great practice for our team. Our guys have a friendly outlook regarding that - they're very interested in playing against each other under their countries' banners. We'd like to see them in Barcelona and China.