Welcome back to another fantasy guide. Can you believe we're literally halfway done with TI? Does that make you upset? Because it makes me upset. We're closing in on the end already and it feels like we've only just gotten here. I'm already making TI9 plans.  

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

• We learned that EternalEnvy is the "kill" in the "F***, Marry, Kill" game that we established in the last guide. That's not really quite fair to him, because everybody on Fnatic is culpable in some way for losing in round one to the completely out-of-nowhere Serenity squad. But EE is the best scapegoat in Dota, and this goes with the territory. The reason you kill EE is because if you don't kill him, he's eventually going to kill you. He's the Jason Voorhees of Dota 2. You f*** w33, you kill EE, and I guess that means you marry literally anybody else. • We learned a slight lesson in probability in bracket predictions. Newbee backfired on me and that'll hurt my bracket more than anything (I had them in the Top 6!!!). But I would have made that pick 100 times out of 100, and there's nothing to learn there. The lesson I'M walking away with is from my failed Fnatic gambit. I had Fnatic going past Serenity and then past OpTic, which obviously isn't happening, and while I think my reasoning was OK, it could have been better. I was POSITIVE Optic was going to be in that lower bracket matchup because I was POSITIVE Liquid would beat them. And I was right. I was not quite positive that Fnatic would beat Serenity though. I should have picked the team that I knew would be available to be there in the first place (OpTic), rather than a team that had to fulfill two conditions to make my pick so (Fnatic beating Serenity and then beating OpTic). The odds were more in OpTic's favor to WIN that series because the odds were more in OpTic's favor to even be there in the first place. • We learned one of the most amazing factoids I've ever heard at a TI. I don't have a clip of it, but Kaci asked the guys on Serenity to say a nice thing about one of their teammates. When it got to XinQ's turn, he said that XCJ is the King of Smokes, because he smokes 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day, and that's something XinQ really respects. That's...bananas. Can XCJ please scrap his bland-ass three-letter handle and just start calling himself KingSmokes? Or maybe Chimney? Please and thank you. All told, my Day 5 score was 149.03, bringing my cumulative total to 1798.38. If you managed to avoid No[o]ne today and/or if you rolled with Mind_Control over 9pasha, you probably beat me. Congrats.  

MAIN EVENT DAY TWO PLAYER POOL

Our player pool doubles from day one from four eligible teams to eight. Of the original 18 teams, six are eliminated (paiN, IG, Fnatic, Newbee, TNC, VGJ.Thunder), and not only are you not playing those cards today, you can actually dust them if you want. In the top of the winner's bracket, Liquid and LGD are idle, as are Winstrike and Vici Gaming at the bottom of the lower bracket. Thus, our field for Day Two comprises the bottom half of the upper bracket and the top half of lower bracket. Your Day 2 field: EG, OG, VGJ.Storm, Secret, OpTic, Serenity, Virtus Pro and Mineski. EVIL "GENUISES" RTZ (14.02) SumaiL (15.50) s4 (12.41) Cr1t- (11.27) Fly (13.46) MINESKI Mushi (14.22) Moonn (13.87) iceiceice (10.82) ninjaboogie (16.29) Jabz (10.58) OG ana (11.46) Topson (12.35) Ceb (11.04) JerAx (11.44) N0tail (14.38) OPTIC Pajkatt (12.32) CCnC (12.59) 33 (10.66) zai (10.65) ppd (12.04) SECRET Ace (14.67) MidOne (11.47) Fata (12.99) YapzOr (15.03) Puppey (14.52) SERENITY zhizhizhi (10.71) Zyd (12.57) XinQ (13.21) XCJ (11.30) Pyw (12.61) VGJ.STORM Resolut1on (14.27) YS (14.07) Sneyking (12.33) MSS- (11.96) SVG (16.85) VIRTUS PRO RAMZES666 (14.76) No[o]ne (15.65) 9pasha (11.50) Solo (14.47) Rodjer (12.44)  

MY MAIN EVENT DAY TWO PICKS

We've got a really big player pool today with 16 supports, 16 cores and 8 offlaners. That's a little TOO many for my taste, and I'd like to simplify things a little bit. We've seen how much losing in these BO3's can screw up fantasy scores, so I want to eliminate anybody who I feel confident is going to come up on the losing end on Day 2. EG vs. Secret? I think EG will ultimately win that one, but I think it's going to be tightly contested and I think Secret clearly has a chance. And while it may seem counter-intuitive, I think OpTic/Serenity is going to be in the same boat (the two teams split in group stage, and we just saw that nobody really knows anything when it comes to Serenity). However, I think Virtus Pro are the overwhelming favorites against Mineski, so I'm going to resist the temptation of ninjaboogie and all the other Mineski players. Finally with VGJ.Storm and OG...I think VGJ.Storm are the favorites and I think OG don't have any particularly enticing fantasy plays to begin with (I know I got burned saying that about ana in the past. I'm unphased. I'm saying it again). So I'm moving forward with Mineski and OG out of my mind. I'll start building my lineup with the most "obvious" card for me, and that's SVG. He's the player with the highest average fantasy points per game available to us at 16+, he wards like an animal, and he's on a team who I think is going to win with relatively few issues. I have a silver of him that doesn't have GREAT bonuses, but I'm not going to overthink this. I'm just grabbing the best player available here. With SVG locked in, I wanted to get my first core situated. The numbers say No[o]ne is the correct play here, but that guy has burned me the last two days in a row (he slightly underperformed on the last day of groups, and was a straight up poor play yesterday), and I'm tired of being mistreated in this abusive relationship I've found myself in. There's some acceptable alternatives here who I will address in a bit, but for now, I'm taking SumaiL, who the numbers say is the next-best available. He's the mid player for a team that's on fire, and while I don't think Secret is a walk-over by any stretch, I think it'll be a good series and the former TI champ will find a way to get his points. Besides, Secret's games have gone kind of long (especially recently when they played Newbee), so that feels like it bodes well. For my second core choice, being dead-set against No[o]ne, I considered both of the VGJ.Storm cores here (Reso and YS). However, despite their decent overall averages for the tournament, their most recent fantasy scores have sucked, and I'd just rather not. For me, it came down to Ace and RAMZES666 in this spot, as both have played pretty well in their most recent matches. I ended up choosing Ace because Secret's games go longer, I think this will be a GOOD series, and my bonuses were just a little better. My second support choice might have been challenging here with YapzOr and Puppey and Fly all on the board, but it became a lot simpler once I talked myself into Ace. Fly's most recent numbers have been kind of pedestrian over the last couple of days, so I'm going to opt to stay away from him, and I'm in no rush to pile too many Secret cards on here when I'm not even thinking they're going to win their next series (although my Puppey card does have a pretty sick wards bonus). I'm just going to try and simplify this for myself. I don't have any VP cards in yet, and Solo is available here. Solo's been pretty solid, but I'm mostly choosing to focus on his performance against LGD. While No[o]ne was crapping the bed, Solo put up a very respectable 14.6 and 18.8 IN DEFEAT. He's probably winning tomorrow, and I think that most likely makes him pretty safe, so he's my pick. Rounding things out at Offlane, there's lots of OK picks here. A case can certainly be made for s4 here (solid numbers, on a team favored to win, king in the north, etc...). I tried to make a case for Sneyking as well because I have his gold, but he finished groups a little bit on the cold side for me. I thought REAL hard about XinQ here (The case for XinQ: As I mentioned earlier, Serenity and Optic split in groups, so I don't KNOW who's winning that series, although I acknowledge Optic is the favorite. When XinQ played them, he scored 14 FP against them both times, which is a good score. And his average is the highest of all offlaners, although that's thanks in part to a 30 FP Alch game). But for me, it's Fata. He's never let me down when I've started him, his recent numbers have been promising, and I just feel it in my bones that he won't let me down (a lot of the points I made for Ace apply here too). There's lots of very good players we're ignoring today, and that'll be true no matter who you go with. You probably won't strike gold with the PERFECT lineup (we rarely do), but you'll hopefully set yourself up to roll with something pretty decent. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @TheDotaScrub to make sure you don't miss a thing. In the mean time, remember, I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm just trying to arm you with the information to make a wise decision. Happy gambling.