
The PGL Arlington Major is the last Dota 2 Major of the year. If you’re a punter who loves international events where the odds are highly speculative, you wouldn’t want to miss this one as you won’t get much chance until The International comes in late October. The DPC Tours are over too, which means betting on Dota 2 is about to get scarce.

We can take a couple of approaches to determine the PGL Arlington Major’s favourite team. The most obvious is to look at the ongoing Riyadh Masters, a huge international event with a prize pool of $4,000,000, enough to make the winnings of Majors and some flagship esports tournaments seem like a week’s worth of allowance.
Top tier teams such as OG, PSG.LGD, TSM, Nigma Galaxy, and Team Spirit participated. Team Secret gave their group a masterclass, standing at 3-0 after beating Tundra Esports, Deboosters (Saudi Arabia’s representative), and PSG.LGD. All wins were clean 2-0 wipe despite what even the best esports bookies’ odds had to say. It’s worth mentioning that PSG.LGD decidedly won against Team Spirit before the Team Secret-PSG.LGD matchup.
Now that the outcome has been decided, with a TI10 grudge match against Team Spirit and PSG.LGD, it seems that the Chinese team are a clear favourite going into Arlington, ESL Malaysia and, most importantly, TI.
Another way is to look at the DPC points instead and see who’s the leading horse from there. This is even more reliable as it reflects each team’s performance during the Tours and shows their extended records since the season started, with the only downside being that most matches were held locally, not internationally.
In this approach, we can see that Thunder Awaken, PSG.LGD, TSM, and OG are in the top 4, respectively. They’ve already earned their seeds in The International 2022, which indicates that they’re ahead of everyone else, to some extent. Meanwhile, Team Secret is in 28th place with 109 points. This completely turns the tide against them.
Among these 4 teams, OG comes out on top as they won the Stockholm Major 2022 against TSM in the Grand Finals. They had Sébastien “Ceb” Debs playing as a stand-in back then, though, and it’s hard to say how much that affected the results.
All in all, we really like OG and have high expectations of them in Arlington. They have a good shot of being the best Dota 2 team in the world right now, followed closely by PSG.LGD and TSM (maybe even Tundra).
For the outside bet, we can think of a few teams including Talon Esports from SEA and Entity from WEU.
Why is Talon Esports an underdog even though they finished 6-1 in DPC SEA Tour 3 Division 1, a tad bit higher than Fnatic? It’s because they’re a fairly recent organisation that hasn’t been to an international LAN event before. They also don’t have a lot of DPC points under their belt, only a handful enough to land them in 22nd place.
Still, Talon Esports is positioned better than Entity, the other underdog on our list. Just early this year, this team was fighting their way out of WEU’s Division 2. When they finally got to the Upper Division, however, they never looked back and started proving their relevance.
Long story short, after competing against heavyweights like OG, Tundra, Team Secret, and Gaimin Gladiators, the team someway, somehow managed to finish 4th place in the DPC WEU Tour 3, robbing Team Secret and Gaimin Gladiator their seed to the Major to everyone’s surprise. Bet365 Esports review and other leading bookmaker ratings don’t have the odds for them yet, so make sure to keep checking.
If Entity wasn’t expected to make it to the 4th place of the DPC WEU Tour 3, then they’re much less expected to make it to the PGL Arlington Major’s Playoffs. So, bet on them at your own risk. With enough luck and lucrative betting offers combined, you might find yourself hitting a grand slam home run just backing them once. But that’s a long shot to take.
The same goes for the favourites, where the odds are too modest that it becomes impossible to win anything without investing a ton of money. We reckon waiting for the Riyadh Masters to conclude is a must if you want to play it safe.
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