Tundra Esports has dominated The International 11 Dota 2 tournament so far. In the group stage they won 14 of their 18 games, topping a stacked group B that also featured two other teams that have since made the top four and the defending champions Team Spirit. In the upper bracket of the playoff stage they easily dispatched two time champions OG and the best Chinese team in the competition Team Aster. Now all they have left to do is win two more matches and the trophy will be theirs.

But unlike other years, Tundra and the other three remaining teams in The International 11, have had to endure a painstaking five day break. As part of a new format for the competition, the main portion of the double elimination bracket was played over four days at the Suntec Singapore arena last week, while the top four teams will compete in the final four matches of the tournament this weekend at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. The last matches were played on October 23, with the next match set to kick off in a few hours on October 29.

In a tournament that has previously seen many winners cite the momentum of winning a lot of games in a short space of time as a key factor in their life changing win, you can see why this is a major new challenge for the players involved.

“Personally I hate it,” says Martin “Saksa” Sazdov, a veteran player at The International, when talking about the week break….