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Evidence of Taiga committing 322 activities come to light
Tommy "Taiga" Le has been absent from the Dota 2 professional scene in the last season. The player only remerged recently and joined Leviatán as their support player. However, his reemergence came with a disturbing history about his time at OG.
Credits: Helena Kristiansson / ESL
While Taiga was with OG, the organisation won a top-tier tournament and made some deep runs. Fast forward to one and a half years; after facing disappointing results in their tournaments, the player took a much-needed break from the professional scene. The player admitted to having issues with his gambling addiction before announcing his retirement.
In his confessional statement, the player admitted to getting involved with the wrong circle of people. The player also shared that he got exploited for his weakness. At the time, what Taiga admitted did not make some sense, but recently, the player’s confessions in the statement came to light. It was revealed Taiga had intentionally thrown some of his matches during his time with OG.
How it started
The activities of Taiga came to light in a recent YouTube video from a popular Russian Dota 2 content creator, Morf. Notably; he has also called out the Eastern European teams for match-fixing in the past year.
In his video, Morf mentioned the former OG player came into contact with Sensibility, who is a former professional Dota 2 player and had ties with a match-fixing organization called 322 Mafia. After a swift interaction between the two parties, they started to discuss the topic of match-fixing.
Credits: ESL One
At first, Sensibility introduced OG’s former player to a method called “ Betting by info”. The method involves placing bets on a particular match after being given information on the match's results, e.g. which team will win or lose. The two parties would then share the profits.
How Taiga Got Used
Credits: Valve
However, Betting by info method takes days or sometimes even weeks. Unfortunately for Taiga, his gambling addiction got the best of him. As a result, the former player lost money on all the accounts given to him on betting on other genres such as CS: GO, football, and other games. His actions caused Sensibility to flip out as Taiga lost around 200K daily.
Now, Taiga was in deep and debted. Thus, Sensibility started to use the situation to his advantage as one of the players from the top teams got wrapped under his fingertips. Sensibility used OG’s former player to gain insider information about the team. In addition to that, Taiga and Sensibility started to make bets on OG.
Last year, OG met Entity in DPC. Given that DPC is handed by Valve, match-fixing in these matches is unexpected as Valve is unforgiving to match-fixers.
Credits: Valve
Sensibility assured Taiga that he would not need to 322 the particular match. Rather than throwing, OG, Taiga's team at the time, will have to take the first blood. Fortunately, OG did, and both parties profited from the bet. As Taiga streamed the match live via Discord stream, Sensibility even expressed a scream of joy as he would have lost a lot of money if Entity drew the first blood.
Taiga got blackmailed into working with Sensibility
This method worked for a while. Slowly, Sensibility was starting to recover from the losses Taiga made. After their success at DPC, the couple worked together on every OG match at DreamLeague. In the match against Nouns, the couple started betting against OG for first blood.
The pair's first mistake came in the OG series against Team Spirit. They placed a massive amount of bet on OG getting the first blood of the series. However, Spirit, being the TI champions, perfectly read the play and countered it, resulting in the couple losing their bets. Although they won the bets in the following group stages, it was not enough to break even.
Image Source: Taken from Morf's YT video
However, in the second group stage, Taiga decided to hop off the 322 train to qualify for The Riyadh Masters. But the 322 Mafia would not let him off the hook that easily. As a result, the blackmail kicked in. To make it short, the former OG support was forced to cooperate. In the final series against Team Liquid, Taiga was even forced to throw the series, but the player refused.
The Consequences
Credits: Twitter.@OGesports
After DreamLeague, Taiga's situation took a turn for the worse. Rumours about him throwing matches started to spread following The Berlin Major. Therefore, he got benched after the tournament due to mental health issues.
The player was investigated but no conclusive results were found. After the investigation, Taiga cut ties with Sensibility and is believed to be working with another match-fixing group. As a result, Sensibility turned to Morf with evidence against the player.
The Reaction
The Dota 2 community is in shock and disbelief as one of its top players falls from grace. However, only a few personalities have addressed the issue at the time of the writing. Following the evidence that came to light recently, OG has issued a statement condemning their former player's actions. The entire Dota 2 community is waiting patiently to see how the situation develops in the coming days.
Featured Image Source: Valve
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