OG become the first-ever two-time back-to-back champions at TI9

THEY’VE DONE IT! OG become the first team in the history of The International to win it twice, and they did it back-to-back. They secured a 3-1 victory in Shanghai against fellow Europeans Team Liquid to achieve this feat.

With this victory, they’ve certainly established themselves as the most dominant Dota 2 team in history.

OG vs Team Liquid

Game 1: The series started off with Team Liquid pulling out one of their cheesy W33 Meepo drafts, while OG resorted to their old Grand Final strategy of picking up a Spectre-centric lineup. Team Liquid took control of the game with spectacular rotations and movement, restricting ana’s farm.

However, at the 37-minute mark, OG took a massive teamfight near the Radiant base to turn it around and regain the advantage. Team Liquid resorted to holding on, by using buybacks and turtling. But Liquid showed us how exactly they’ve made it all the way through the lower brackets. One pick-off on ana was all it took for Kuroky and co. to take Roshan and march down mid.

With ana reluctant to buyback, Meepo and Templar Assassin killed the base in seconds to secure the game 1 victory.

Game 2: OG decided to up the ante and played in a much faster pace in Game 2. Liquid simply crumbled under the pressure applied as a result. They just couldn’t handle the sheer aggressiveness of the OG lineup. Mindcontrol had very little impact on his Tidehunter, while Topson ran riot picking up a number of kills on his Monkey King putting up a 16/3/18 KDA and just snowballed to victory to level the series 1-1.

Game 3: It was more of the same on Game 3. OG opted to let Topson handle his signature Pugna in this game. It proved to pay off as Topson completely snowballed and ran riot, pulling in attention from all 5 of the Liquid heroes but still managing to secure an absurd 17/3/11 scoreline to hand OG yet another easy victory in just 23 minutes.

Game 4: Team Liquid gave OG and ana their signature carry IO. The reigning champions made them regret it. Even though Team Liquid managed to get themselves off to a much better start, OG turned up the heat around the 20-minute mark when ana secured his Aghanim's Scepter and his Level 15 Spirit talent. They simply ran at Liquid and secured the win in one swift swoop.

With this victory, OG reclaims the Aegis of Champions and secure over $15.5M USD as Prize Winnings.