Royal Never Give Up vs Team Aster: RNG are not yet a competitor for Aster

On Saturday, August 07, the fifth season of the Chinese OGA Dota PIT kicks off. The second match of the game day will be a clash between Royal Never Give Up and Team Aster.

OGA Dota PIT S5: China is a Chinese Dota 2 tournament that will brighten up the month of August, August 07-16. In the tournament, the eight strongest teams in the region will compete for $150,000. The group stage will take place from August 07 to 10, and the playoffs will start on August 11.

Royal Never Give Up: A crucial start for the team

RNG have failed to qualify for the int, so they are limited in tournaments for the next few months, and OGA Dota PIT S5: China should be their most crucial tournament before the International.

The RNG team is an outlier from the second division of the first DPC league, in which they were not without defeats but finished the season quite confidently. In the March off-season, SAG took a strong player in the face of Dstones and fought hard in the i-League. All the representatives of China’s elite there, the boys fought back, even beating some of them. The RNG team played among the elite teams in the second DPC League but still failed and dropped to the second division.

Overall, this team was not among the favourites of this season in the elite, but these guys were able to surprise. They even had a chance to fight for the majors but lost in their key games and had to fight to keep their place in the elite. The teams Elephant and Royal Never Give Up exchanged the fifth position, the in-game leader RNG Super went to the Elephants, and RedPanda returned to the Royal Club system.

In the i-League 2021 playoffs, the RNG team, already with RedPanda, did not perform as they would have liked. Yes, they defeated the frankly unplayable Invictus Gaming (2-0) but lost to PSG.LGD (0-2) without a chance, thus dropping out of contention early. What will happen now? Just this match will show.

Team Aster: The path to another trophy?

Towards the end of 2020, Team Aster have earned the unspoken title of being the most feared team to abruptly stop playing in crucial matches, especially the grand finals. DPC leagues aside, where the tournament format is much different from other tournaments, Team Aster won something back in the March 2020 Minor. After that, at the end of last year, two more finals of domestic major online tournaments were played, but despite all the dominance as the championships went on, we saw the jitters spoiling the whole game.

Perhaps that same jitters is the reason for the team’s failure in the majors, but the boys lifted that curse at the end of July 2021, winning i-League 2021 on a very excellent performance. Perhaps the i-League 2021 itself didn’t carry any priorities for the teams, the teams (who made it to the int) were playing for fun, and Team Aster are quality, handling drafts and execution with no problems as if we were watching a third DPC league.

I’m sure Team Aster won’t be roaring and will be battling for another trophy. These guys are hungry for wins, and they have little competition in the domestic arena as we go into 2021.

Expert Betting Tips

Team Aster are still a few goals above their RNG opponents, so I suggest betting on a handicap 2 (-1.5) maps for 2.27.

On the first map, Team Aster’s frags handicap will be at least -7.5; odds on that are 1.89.

Team Aster’s individual frags total on the second map will be over 25.5; odds on that are 1.93.