After a day off, it's time to pump out another one of these. This guide will be a little bit longer because there's a lot of miscellaneous stuff I had to address. We're gonna look at fantasy a little more in-depth, we're gonna cover the bracket predictions, we're gonna cover day four, and we're of course going to take a look at Day 1 of the Main Event. But where to start?  

SO LONG, GROUP STAGE

When it comes to fantasy Dota, the group stage is my favorite part of the entire process. You've got lots and lots of players to choose from, you learn a lot, and you're swimming in an ocean of Dota matches. Don't get me wrong, I love the main event as much as the next guy, but when it comes to these silly little digital cards, it's my favorite. So, quickly, let's look at the top performers from groups and recognize the Top 5 Cores, Supports, and Offlaners. CORES 1. Miracle (16.52) Remember when I doubted him on Day One, and then he had a bad opening series to toy with me before he absolutely went off for four straight days and eviscerated me? I remember. 2. No[o]ne (16.10) We didn't get to use him at the height of his powers, but that's hopefully going to change soon. 3. Sccc (16.09) Our hero from Day Two has fallen into the lower bracket. He has a long road ahead, but I don't think we've heard the last of him in fantasy. At least I hope not. 4. SumaiL (15.50) Are you punks satisfied yet? 5. Abed (15.47) Most of us don't have super-fond memories of Abed because we used him on a Day Three when he started to underperform. But his first two days were killer, and I still love him even if nobody else will. 6-10: Somnus 'M, RAMZES666, Ace, Mushi, w33 (RIP) THE WORST: Silent (9.98) SUPPORTS 1. SVG (16.85) The guy who looks like Jesus and places lots of wards. The warding Jesus. Wesus. 2. ninjaboogie (16.39) Unless you managed to slide him into your Day One lineup, you probably never got the joy of deploying this guy, and you may not get to do it at all. Even if Mineski gets past their BO1 with TNC, a date with the loser of VP/LGD is troublesome. 3. pieliedie (15.75) #TankTheGank 4. KuroKy (15.58) I've had the pleasure of using the bald German's services twice already, and spoiler alert, I'll have that pleasure once again tomorrow. 5. YapzOr (15.03) Came a little bit out of nowhere with a truly inspired Day 4 that lifted him up. 6-10: Kuku, Tims, Q (RIP), Puppey, kaka THE WORST: Nofear (9.33) OFFLANE 1. SamH (13.14) Seriously, where did he come from? Trash at TI7 in fantasy, and now this. What even... 2. Fata (12.99) Very solid play from start to finish, and a Day 4 darling. 3. XinQ (12.96) SERENITY NOW!!! 4. Universe (12.58) Fell back to earth a little in the second half of groups, but still a lovely human. 5. s4 (12.41) THE KING IN THE NORTH!!! THE KING IN THE NORTH!!! 6-10: Sneyking, Mind_Control, 9pasha, nongrata, 33 THE WORST: eLeVeN (9.01)  

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

• We learned that you can never count anybody out in Dota. OpTic was tied for last place in group B heading into the last day, and their fantasy averages to that point all stunk. Most of us (understandably) left them for dead, but they shocked the world by going 4-0 through groups, forcing a tiebreak, winning THAT, and winding up in Upper Bracket against all odds (and most of us missed out on all those sweet, sweet fantasy points as they did it). Yeah, they're on the absolute wrong end of the upper bracket, and will most likely have to take a path of Liquid (where they will likely lose), then Fnatic, and if they get through THAT, they will have the privilege and honor of facing the loser of VP/LGD. That's hard, and one could argue it would have been an easier path to be in lower bracket when you look at Newbee's draw by comparison. Still, it was super, super commendable what they did, and I think of all of those players a lot more highly than I did yesterday. Well done. • We learned if you're ever playing "F***, Marry, Kill", and w33 is one of the options, he's "F***" by default. What I mean is, you don't want to kill him, because his individual plays are SO DAMN SICK, and you want those in the world because they make the world a better place. But you certainly don't want to marry him either because, as we learned on Day 4, he will break your heart and you'll wind up losing half your shit in the divorce. So yes. You F*** w33. As long as you don't screw up and fall in love, because you will eventually get burned. • We learned that you shouldn't bring a pistol to a shotgun fight. My SVG pick makes me mad in hindsight. The man did well of course (a little under his average, but well nonetheless), I have no issue with his performance. But my brain was out to lunch. Using his card was an auto-loss in the potential tiebreak department, and as we saw, that was impactful. My backup pick would have been Puppey on Day 4, and I want to math this out right now so we can all observe what a dummy I can be sometimes. SVG's average going into Day 4: 17.0/game Puppey's average going into Day 4: 13.7/game SVG's 17 over 4 games would have projected for 68 FP. Puppey's 13.7 over 4 games would have projected for 55 FP. For the cost of a projected sacrifice of 13 FP on Day 4, I could have had another bullet in my gun in the tiebreak department (13 FP is nothing in the grand scheme of things). Small risk for a lot of potential reward, and I walked away from it. Damn it. All told, my Day 4 lineup of No[o]ne-w33-Fata-SVG-Fenrir netted me 306.13 for a cumulative four-day total of 1649.35. I'm obviously happy about Fata, and I'm really not that mad about Fenrir and w33 (they were just tiebreak gambits that missed the mark). SVG though. Dang it.  

MAIN EVENT DAY ONE PLAYER POOL

The first day of the main event deals us our narrowest player pool to date, but it's also one of our most talent-rich pools we've seen in a bit. Of the 16 teams remaining in the tournament, four are idle (VGJ.Storm, EG, OG, Secret), and eight are only going to be involved in BO1s (Fnatic, VGJ.Thunder, Serenity, Vici, Mineski, TNC, Wistrike, Newbee) and are thus unplayable. As for the other two who have been eliminated (IG and paiN), their cards are actually completely worthless to us at this juncture, so if you want to desecrate your collection by doing some last-minute dusting, go nuts. Dusting duster should give you a sense of real ironic empowerment. Right before you dust him, you should watch this clip and imagine Bryan Cranston growling "I AM the Duster!" while wearing a wig. It might help your mood. You won't know until you try. That leaves four teams who are participating in the only three BO3's on the schedule, and that's our pool. Get hyped, because we get to choose from Liquid, Virtus Pro, LGD and OpTic. My god, I've got the sweats. LGD Ame (12.58) Somnus M' (15.35) Chalice (10.71) xNova (13.90) fy (12.69) LIQUID Miracle- (16.52) MATUMBAMAN (12.59) Mind_Control (12.10) Gh (11.03) KuroKy (15.58) OPTIC Pajkatt (13.49) CCnC (12.90) 33 (11.54) zai (12.33) ppd (13.69) VIRTUS PRO No[o]ne (16.10) RAMZES666 (14.72) 9pasha (11.72) Solo (14.19) RodJer (12.88)  

MY DAY DAY FIVE PICKS

Before I make these picks, lets take a step back from the numbers and address two things. First, with BO3s coming, this is a great time to remind ourselves of how the rules work. In fantasy Dota BO3s, you are awarded points for a player's best two games from a BO3 series. So if a series goes 2-0, you just get points from those games as you normally would. But supposing LGD/VP went three games, and your xNova card scored 18, 16 and 9 in those three contests, then you'd get 34 (18 + 16), and the lowest score (9) would be dropped. Thus, it's slightly advantageous to bet on a player who you think will go three games because there's a little bit of protection in place to keep you from getting screwed by bad games. However, don't go all-in on a guy JUST because you think he's going three either, because at the end of the day, everybody involved is guaranteed to score for 2 and exactly 2 games. The second thing is, lets really take a look at OpTic. Yes, they are white hot right now after what they did in groups on Saturday, and yes, their players looked great. Lets keep in mind, however, that those fantasy scores occurred when OpTic was WINNING. Ask yourself honestly...how do you think OpTic will do against Liquid? CONVENTIONAL wisdom says Liquid should win this convincingly, and the numbers back up Liquid as well. I don't want to back a team who I believe is going to lose because that normally doesn't help with fantasy scores, so I am staying away from OpTic players today. That might prove to be wrong, but I'm perfectly happy with the prospect of playing it safe today. So with that out of the way, the reality of the situation is you have 5 slots to fill, and all of them are completely agonizing. Support has three LEGIT options, Core has four LEGIT options, and Offlane has two...um, options. Normally, I'd group all of these together according to position, but that's not the way my brain's working with this particular day. I feel like order is important today, so I'm doing these in the order that I arrived at them. How you start building a lineup, I find, impacts how you finish building a lineup, so that's what this is. And if, by the way, you choose a different starting point, you'll probably wind up somewhere different as I did. The first player I plugged into my lineup to begin my build is KuroKy. The reigning TI champ has the highest FP/game average of the available supports, he's on a team I'm comfortable is going to win, and I like his point distribution, which is to say, of his 16 games, 9 have been what I'd consider "good" (16FP+) while only 4 have been "bad" (12FP-). He's also the only one among the supports I'm considering who I have a wards bonus on, so that clearly helps. From there, I just went and grabbed the best core player of the entire first round in Miracle, who's average is the highest, and has only had one real stinker of a game. Everything else has been somewhere between fine (13-14), good (15-17), or great (18+). Six of those games qualify as Great, in case you were wondering. With two Liquid cards in my lineup, I moved to my Offlane spot where we've got an auto-pick coming based on the picks I just made. With such a talented pool to choose from, I'm NOT going with a third Liquid card today, so MinD_Control is out for me (if you want to use him, you have my full blessing). LGD's offlaner Chalice actually scores among the bottom quarter of all offlaners in this tournament, so I'm not picking him, and as stated above, I'm not going with OpTic players today, so 33 is out as well. That leaves me with 9pasha by default. He and MC had very similar averages in the group stage, I have his silver, and I'm perfectly fine with this. That leaves two very difficult picks to close things out. For my core, I can choose from any of No[o]ne, Somnus and RAMZES666. RAMZES is a lovely, fine play on any occasion, and if you love his bonuses and/or have a gut feeling, go with him. I'm just eliminating him to make life easier because the numbers back No[o]ne. Now, between No[o]ne and Somnus....so tough. If you're super sure VP is going to win here, take No[o]ne, and likewise, if you're super sure here that LGD is going to win, take Somnus. But I'm not super sure of anything. I just tapped out and let robots do my thinking for me, and plugged both cards into Fantasy Dota's Compare Players tab. The data suggests my Gold No[o]ne should outscore my silver Somnus by 1.5 FP/game, aka 3 FP over the course of 2 games. Not a huge deal-breaker one way or the other, but just breaking the tie and moving on is good enough for me. And then with my final pick, which is between xNova and Solo, the two players have similar averages and I have golds for both (neither with Obs Ward multipliers unfortunately). I was sure before I even got started I was going to find a way to use an LGD card SOMEwhere in this lineup, and here's where it happens. xNova it is. Like I said, today in particular is agonizing, because I'm ultimately deciding to bench some excellent fantasy players in RAMZES666, Somnus M', Solo and Mind_Control. Whoever you plug in, you're going to be leaving some high level talent on the sidelines. But them's the breaks sometimes.  

BONUS: BRACKET PREDICTIONS

I keep telling people I'm not really the best for this particular part of the compendium predictions, but you guys kept asking for it, and a man provides. Thus, here you go (click the image to see a larger version of it). Let's talk through my reasoning. • First of all, I picked LGD to win the entire tournament back in my tournament predictions, and I decided it'd be more fun to double down on them (If they do win, I'll be rolling in BP...it might be more prudent to use this as an opportunity to hedge a bit, but I'd rather do the thing that's more fun. It's my compendium, deal with it). LGD is the best Chinese team in a "Chinese year", and I think they're good, and I'm picking them and that's that.  LGD being in the finals in my bracket is what a magician might call a "force", because I crafted by bracket to get them there. So I knew that going in, they'd be in my grand finals one way or another. If you disagree with that, you should not copy my bracket. • Lets do winners bracket first. Liquid over Optic seems super duper safe, and LGD over VP fits my narrative mentioned above (I think VP is great, they can TOTALLY win that series...it just seems to me that they have a history of underperforming in TIs). After that, I'm just taking the favorites in EG and VGJ.Storm. • That sets up Liquid vs. LGD. LGD has had success here in the past (EPICENTER + split in TI groups), but Liquid also 2-0'd them in the Supermajor and I just have a feeling they get the better of LGD here. As for EG and VGJ.Storm, EG smashed these guys at The Summit 9, and they've just looked really good in groups. I LIKE Storm a lot. I HOPE they win this. I don't think they will. And then in your winners final between Liquid and EG? Could go either way, but I think EG gets revenge from group stage. I'm mostly doing this because, if Liquid makes the grand finals, I don't like my LGD chances very much, so I'm organizing my bracket in a believable way where that doesn't happen. • With the upper bracket sorted, lets look at lower bracket. The first round has some easy picks (Newbee and Fnatic are CLEAR favorites in their matchups, so I'm going them. Yes, Serenity COULD win, I don't think they will). VG vs. VGJ.Thunder was a tough call for me, the two teams are 3-3 against each other dating back to March, and neither of them knocks our socks off. I picked VGJ.Thunder out of respect to ddc more than anything, but it's not a big deal who you pick IMO because whoever wins doesn't seem too favorable to go much father. That leaves TNC and Mineski. My reasoning is this: BOTH teams were ice cold to end groups (each went 1-5 on days 3/4), albeit both played tough opponents. TNC is scrappy, yes. But the two teams inhabit the same region, and Mineski got a direct invite to TI for a reason. Plus, are YOU going to bet on Mushi getting bounced in round one? Mushi, the guy who's been Top 6 at TIs on three different occasions? I'm not. Mineski is my pick. • In Round 2 of lower bracket, I picked VP and Secret to advance because, well, they're better. In the case of OpTic and Fnatic, I'm not basing that on much other than that Fnatic went 3-1 against OpTic at The Summit 9, and if OpTic gets bounced down to lowers like this, they aren't going to be riding their Day 4 momentum ANYWAY. Finally, when it comes to Newbee and OG, I just talked myself into one thing: it seems like there's ALWAYS a team who starts in lower bracket who makes a deep run, right? What better horse to ride than your TI7 runners up, especially against a team with as much baggage as OG? Lets get it. • In Round 3, do you expect me to believe VP is losing to Fnatic? Come on. Newbee and Secret will be a dog fight, but I'm going to keep backing my horse for one more round. • In Round 4, VP and VGJ.Storm should be a lot of fun. I'm picking VGJ.Storm because NA pride, and because Virtus Pro has struggled in previous internationals as previously mentioned. LGD is my pick to win the thing, so they auto-advance, sorry Newbee. And going forward in the final two rounds of lowers and the grand final, LGD is my pick to win the thing, so sorry to VGJ.Storm and Liquid and EG as LGD makes a heroic run through the three of you. And that's about it! I'll be back for Main Event Day 2, when our player pool will expand considerably from what it was today. Until then, feel free to follow me on Twitter @TheDotaScrub to make sure you don't miss any updates. Remember, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just trying to show you how I think so you can make an informed decision. Good luck out there, and happy gambling.