The first CIS open qualifiers of the Kiev Major concluded with Andrey 'ALWAYSWANNAFLY' Bondarenko’s stack, Double Dimension emerging victorious.

Just as with the EU region, the first CIS bracket featured over one thousand teams trying to grab that single regional qualifiers spot available for them. At the end of two long and tough days of best-of-one battles, the squad that will join the eight invited teams for regionals is Double Dimension.

The most known Double Dimension players are Andrey 'ALWAYSWANNAFLY' Bondarenko and Dmitry 'UnderShock' Bolshakov. Alwayswannafly was part of Team Empire from 2013 to 2015., but in the post TI 5 shuffle he joined CIS Rejects and since then has bounced between numerous CIS squads, including Team Spirit, Polarity, and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. For the first two months of 2017 he played in no less than four squads before deciding to give this Major a try  with a pub stack. Apart from UnderShock, who also has a long track record of professional teams he played for in the last few years, the other three members of Double Dimension are CIS players who are trying to break out from the lower tiers.

Double Dimension’s victory is somewhat surprising given the fact that teams like MVP Revolution or LQ were also fighting in this session. Although they might not be as familiar names for some of the Dota 2 fans, MVP Revolution is a team that goes back over a year to when the five players were playing as NoLifer5.Reborn. Ahead of the WESG Global Grand finals from January this year the five Kyrgyz players got picked up by MVP, which is a South Korean organization. But given the players’ nationality, they had to compete in the CIS bracket to obey Valve’s region lock rule for this Major.

The other squad that might not ring any bells at a first glance is LQ, a stack of CIS veterans who formed a team post 2017 Spring Shuffle. LQ features the likes of Gleb 'Funn1k' Lipatnikov and Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov, both needing no introduction. Alongside them sits Vladislav 'blowyourbrain' Morozyuk whose Dota 2 career goes back to 2011. However, he is more known for his time with Empire and Virtus Pro in 2012-2013 and with Moscow Five in 2014. Despite their experience luggage, LQ got eliminated in the round of 32 by YourTA. MVP Revolution made it to top sixteen where they got defeated by PENTA Sports.  

Both teams will have another shot in the second open qualifiers session. The regional qualifiers for CIS will begin March 10 and without any CIS team receiving a direct invite to Kiev Major, Na’Vi, Virtus Pro, Empire, Vega Squadron are all going head to head and only one will get to play in front of their home crowd from April 27th to 30th at the Palace of Arts from Kiev, Ukraine.

Kiev Major CIS regional qualifiers team lineup:

Natus Vincere (invited)
Virtus Pro (invited)
Team Empire (invited)
Vega Squadron (invited)
F.R.I.E.N.D.S. (invited)
Team Spirit (invited)
Comanche (invited)
Effect (invited)
Double Dimension (open qualifiers #1 winners)
TBD (open qualifiers #2 winners )