^^
Had noticed the team name Yakult's Brothers come up a few times on this thread and never had watched a match played by this team due to them being in the region of China. But they are currently in one of the closed qualifier matches being played with Spiky Gaming.
Other notable teams playing right now are:
9Pandas vs Navi
Wolf Warriors vs Chimera
Gaimin Gladiators vs Passion UA
Team Tidebound vs Xtreme Gaming
Team Turkiye vs Tundra

Have checked how they are all doing and it seems to be all over the table interms of who is a clear winner in each region.

OG was featured in something I was just watching on youtube:
How One 500 IQ Play Created Dota's Greatest Dynasty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcVAghrx1UU

Who is this player which made such a high I.Q move in DOTA2 as I was not watching the tournaments last season due to being more into CounterStrike. But now have warmed up to it with watching more videos such as this one I just outlined above.

It does make it much more exciting to watch when you know the history and lore behind such players and the huge plays they had made in the past so to make a lasting effect on the genre.

Does anyone really know why Nightfall got out of Tundra just after a few months ? because Tundra managed to achieve a final with him as carry and 33 always said that Nightfall is the type of carry that suits his playstyle the best but maybe after all , it wasn't like that ? because I see no other reason of why Nightfall will accept to return as a carry in 2nd team of BetBoom instead of staying with Tundra. Also Dyracho is a great carry and we see this in Gaiming Gladiators recent performance without him.  

So now we know where Ropz will be going after Faze Clan released him:

https://www.hltv.org/news/40728/official-vitality-unveil-ropz
He will be replacing Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi who will be sent to Vitality's inactive roster.

There was the HLTV 2024 Awards show last night and of course Donk won rookie of the year.
Some notable mentions were player of the year going to ZywOo & Natus Vincere taking team of the year also event of the year rounding out the list shown below:


Some new team rosters were also shown:




Ahead of the BLAST Bounty 2025 season Team Liquid will be facing off with an all female team for the Imperial Esports organization.

Didn't think they would be facing off with the ones who just won team of the year at the hltv awards.
But I must of had Liquid on my mind while I was posting about this matchup with the Imperial womens team.
Because I was listening to the video of it while writing it out so doubted they said them at first. But I went back to relisten and it turned out you were correct, they are playing Natus Vincere.
But this sounds like more of an exihibtion match rather than one that will go on their permanent professional record.
So 9Pandas has a womens side that will be going against Team Liquid is what you are saying?
Hadn't heard of that one yet but it would go with the theme of this tournament. Being only 5-6 days.

It has already started and FlyQuest is up against MiBR for the first match of day one for the first tournament of the year:

BLAST Premier Bounty, Day 1: FlyQuest vs MIBR, 3DMAX vs HEROIC, Liquid vs 9 Pandas, Spirit vs Fnatic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJAKnLnHxJc

Nice to see it started on the first day. What caught my attention is that the format has changed this year. I don't know about the Blast Premier bounty format, it looks good, I don't know people what thinking, but I like it.
It allows lower-tier teams to challenge higher-tier teams. Lower-ranked teams can win these prizes if they choose and defeat higher-ranked opponents in the first round.
With each win, the winning team gets 50% of their opponent's prize, while the remaining 50% is carried over to the next round.
There are some good picks. Fnatic chose team sprit. Betboom chose Mouz.

Some news of a CS2 player caught cheating while playing in CCT tournament play:


Was just putting in my bets before the next round of matches began for BLAST Bounty tournament we are going to have start in around the next 5 minutes but noticed two things new while I was placing my bets popped up on the screen:


Also a new feature offered in the ESports Hub when you click on a match, there will be this screen if you haven't been there in awhile: BetBuilder for your Esports matches!


Here are those next matches being played today:

Got blasted by BLAST yesterday when I placed a bet on Mouz who got beat badly by the newly created roster in BetBoom.
That was a really bad loss by a top tier CounterStrike team who won a title last season too.

Just unbelievable with the return of Boombl4 at the helm in their first tournament win to get the $30k bounty from this top tier one team in Mouz.

It almost happened to G2 too who dropped their first map very badly to B8 a team I never seen play before.
G2 were 1.17x odds going into this match but by the second map they were 1.50x but still favored to win which they did but it wasn't as easy the sportsbooks thought it would be reflecting in the odds provided.

Pain easily defeated Faze. First they defeated him on the dust2 map. It was obvious from the tactics and reactions in the game that they worked hard on this map. Then they closed the Inferno map.
It was one of the maps that Faze was best at. However, Ropz is gone now. There was a player change in Faze. Ropz left the team and they transferred EliGE instead.
Was Ropz better or will Faze be better with Elige's arrival?
What are your opinions about Faze? Ropz was a lurker player. EliGE is a more aggressive and forward player. They actually do completely different things. In this match, EliGE came after Broky in terms of score contribution. Frozen had a bad series.