Virtus Pro disqualified from The Summit 5 Dota 2 tournament after using ineligible player

Virtus Pro have been disqualified from The Summit 5 after trying to use an ineligible player, disguised as one of their regular team mates.

Over the weekend the European leg of The Summit 5 qualifiers wrapped up, with two of Europe’s finest Dota teams, Virtus Pro and Ad Finem, battling it out in a best for five for a slot at the eventual LAN finals in LA.

Virtus Pro ended up winning the series 3-2, but shortly after their win a post appeared on the Dota 2 subreddit questioning the victory. In game three of the series Virtus Pro player Ilya "ALOHADANCE" Korobkin disconnected and the game was paused. The competition rules state that each team has 10 minutes of pause time, so once that time was up the game resumed as a 4 vs 5, which VP ended up losing.

By the time game four rolled around ALOHADANCE was seemingly back online, and played the two remaining games. However the post alleged that this was in fact not ALOHADANCE playing, but Vladimir "No[o]ne" Minenko who plays for Vega Squadron. The post stated that comments made on No[o]ne’s stream, hinted that he was going to play for VP just before the stream ended, and analysis showed that there were vast differences between the play style of the ALOHADANCE account in games three and four.

An eventual confession was made by Virtus Pro owner, Anton Cherepennikov, who apologized for his team’s actions. The rule break was later confirmed by tournament organisers Beyond the Summit who revealed that now Ad Finem will take the EU qualifier spot at the LAN event in July.