Team Liquid

Team Liquid (Liquid) is a professional gaming organization formed in 2000 and based in the Netherlands.

History
The team's original incarnation has roots in a North American lineup headed by FLUFFNSTUFF called Team FIRE, that went on to represent compLexity Gaming at The International 2012. Following an early knockout, the coL squad disbanded with TC, ixmike88, and FLUFFNSTUFF moving over to Liquid and joining BuLba, who competed at TI2 with Evil Geniuses, and Korok, formerly of Quantic Gaming.

In 2013 the team established itself as one of the premier North American organizations with this roster, placing highly in events such as the Raidcall D2L, The Defense Season 3, The Premier League Season 4, and the American Dota League in addition to securing an invite to The International 2013. After a rocky start they fell into the lower half of the bracket by a thin margin, which saw them defeat MUFC and then had one of their defining moments in a stellar performance against LGD.cn, knocking the Chinese behemoth out of the event. A loss to the defending champions Invictus Gaming saw them out in 7-8th place.

After the event the roster changed once more, with ixmike88 going inactive to focus on ixdl, and Korok leaving for school.qojqva of mousesports and Waytosexy of Dignitas eventually filled the ranks. After a strong start in online leagues and group stages, the team had major stumbles at both Fall LAN events, falling early at both MLG Columbus and DreamLeague. By early Winter, the team started to falter in its online play as well, with the frustration boiling over and being shown by FLUFFNSTUFF on his TL.net blog. The blog resulted in an ultimatum for FLUFF: win as captain, or be removed from the team. The team failed to improve, and Liquid soon parted ways with Fluff. After trialing a few players, including Sneyking, DeMoN was added to the roster to take his place.

Despite some early promise, the team still struggled, falling to Evil Geniuses and North American Rejects in straight sets, and in doing so, failing to qualify for The Summit. Shortly after, TL fell to Evil Geniuses in the final stages of the ESL One Frankfurt qualfiers. Due to the teams recent struggles, they were not invited as a direct seed to The International 2014, and instead had to fight through another set of qualifiers. Liquid ended the group stage tied for first, setting up a winners finals against NAR, a team they had yet to ever take a match off. Liquid fell 0-2, setting up a match against ex-liquid players ixmike and FLUFF on their new team Sneaky Nyx Assassins. After a close game one, Liquid appeared to have captured the momentum and convincingly took game two, advancing them to play NAR in the finals. The finals ended up being much more back and forth than any other set between the teams, but after the delayed final game and Liquid's eventual defeat, they were forced to settle with a Play-In position for TI4.

Following up their disappointing TI4 qualifiers, the team continued to experiment with juggling their roles while playing in the GEST - The Challenge 4. Demon moved to the carry or offlane, with TC moving to support. The team showed some early success against we Try and Relax, but stumbled again when they hit NAR in the semi finals. Liquid capped off the month with a disappointing group stage exit in the D2L Western Challenge.

In early June, the team did manage a small bright spot, with their second place finish in the second season of the American Dota League Season 2, falling to mousesports 1-3 in the finals. The team also shuffled positions slightly again, with BuLba moving to support, and DeMoN to the offlane. The tournament marked Team Liquid's last official matches before fighting for the wildcard spot in Seattle in a month and a half's time.

Although Liquid earned a trip to Seattle, they still needed four wins to make their way into the main event of the tournament. First up was the favorite CIS, coming out of China, and led by Black^. Heavily favoring the picks of Skywrath Mage for BuLba and Tidehunter for DeMoN, Liquid crushed CIS in two straight games, with a combined kill score of 49-12. This would advance them forward to face MVP Phoenix, who had won their series against Virtus.pro on the other side of the bracket. After a close first match in which TL came out on top, Liquid were able to ride the momentum and close out the series in convincing fashion in the second match, qualifying for the main event without losing a game.

At the main event, Liquid stumbled out the of the blocks with another loss to nemesis Na`Vi.US (ex-NAR), but bounced back in a major way with wins over favorites Newbee, Evil Geniuses and DK in Day 1. In Day 2, TL continued to rack up wins, beating Empire and Fnatic, but lost three, to Cloud9, LGD, and most notably, Arrow Gaming, a loss that would haunt them in the next stage. In Day 3, Liquid managed to defeat the previous two TI winners, Invictus Gaming and Alliance, with an additional win over Titan, but also dropped two matches, one to Natus Vincere, and one to Vici Gaming. Liquid only had one game on Day 4, with a win guaranteeing them at least top 6 in the group stage, and top 8 overall. Unfortunately, mousesports went on to defeat them, and Liquid finished in a 4 way tie for 5th spot, but fell to 7th after accounting for the tiebreaking rules.

Their 7th place in group put them up against LGD Gaming in the next round, the team Liquid upset in the previous year. They would face off again in an elimination match, loser walking home with ~50,000USD, and the winner guaranteed at least ten times that. This year was different from the previous though, and LGD outclassed Liquid, convincingly taking two straight games, and knocking Liquid out of the tournament in 9th-10th place.

The post-TI shuffle was not kind to Liquid. It was announced DeMoN had departed a couple weeks after the event, quickly followed up by waytosexy. About a week later, Team Tinker appeared, featuring both BuLba and qojqva. Many hoped this was a trial for a new roster for Liquid, but after less than a month, it was revealed that the two had left the Liquid organization. Being the last man standing, TC left Liquid in early October, leaving Liquid without a Dota roster for the first time in two years.

On October 9th, 2015, Team Liquid announced their re-entry into the Dota 2 scene with their signing of 5Jungz.

Team Liquid's success continued on to the Shanghai Major in March 2016, where the team was able to reach second place, falling to Team Secret in the grand finals. Following their silver medal was another at ESL One Manila, where they lost to Wings Gaming the Finals. Finally taking home a win at a large LAN Team Liquid won EPICENTER in Moscow over Newbee 3-2. Returning to Manila for the Manila Major Liquid was again defeated in the Grand finals, this time by OG. After the two Majors, Team Liquid was among the teams that were directly invited to The International 2016.

After the conclusion of the Kiev Major, it was time to look forward to The The International 2017. Only few opportunities remained to secure an invite for the most prestigious event of the year and the culmination of the competitive season. Their first test, would be to secure a spot at the LAN Finals of DreamLeague Season 7, held in Atlanta in July. The team managed to qualify by finishing second in the European Divison behind Team Secret. They also swept the competition in Shanghai at the StarLadder i-League Invitational, in May, beating TNC Pro Team 3-2 in the Grand Finals. Finally, Team Liquid successfully defended their EPICENTER 2017 title in Moscow as they defeated Evil Geniuses 3-1 in the grand finals after narrowly qualifying for the playoffs and battling through the knockout stages, beating heavyweights Virtus.Pro and LGD.Forever Young in the process.

Two LAN wins and one successful qualifier for another LAN meant that Team Liquid would be among the six invited teams to attend The International 2017 making this KuroKy's seventh TI. But preparation wasn't done before TI, as Team Liquid still had DreamLeague Season 7 to attend, alongside Team Secret, Vega Squadron, and Planet Odd. Beating Planet Odd 3-2 in the finals, Team Liquid secured their third consecutive LAN win.

Team Liquid would come into The International 2017 as one of the favorites. For the Group Stage, they would be seeded into Group A alongside other favorites such as Evil Geniuses, LGD Gaming, or Team Secret among others. After a strong start to the Group Stage, Liquid found themselves in a neck-and-neck race with LGD Gaming for the top seed of their group, which Team Liquid finally were able to secure with an overall score of 13-3. This meant that they would be allowed to pick their opponent in the Upper Bracket of the Main Event from the 3rd and 4th placed teams from Group B: Virtus.pro or Invictus Gaming. Unwilling to face the aggressive Russian squad, Team Liquid chose iG as their first opponent.

However, the first series of the main event did not go as planned and Team Liquid dropped down to the Lower Bracket after losing 1-2 to iG. To make it to the Grand Finals, they would have to make a run similar to Digital Chaos's run at The International 2016. Their first opponent in the Lower Bracket would be Team Secret, to whom they lost the first game of the series. Team Liquid found themselves one game away from elimination, but not for the last time at this event. Beating out the surprise contender Team Empire, fellow favorites Virtus.pro and LGD Gaming, Team Liquid managed to reach the Lower Bracket final, where they faced another surprise contender in LGD.Forever Young. LFY had managed to nearly sweep Group B, only dropping two games and hadn't dropped a game on the main stage until the Upper Bracket Final against Newbee. LFY quickly proved themselves a formidable opponent and after the first game of the Lower Bracket final, Team Liquid found themselves once again with their backs against the wall. However, they prevailed yet again and turned the series around on the back of MinD_ContRoL's Nature's Prophet. Team Liquid had reached the Grand Final, where Newbee waited. Team Liquid had never dropped a series to Newbee and this time would be no different: Liquid swept the series 3-0 in dominant fashion, claiming their first Dota Major Championship and becoming the seventh winner of The International 2017 and over 10 Million USD in prize money.

This would be the first time that a TI Grand Final would end in a 3-0 sweep as well as the first time a team made up of 5 different nationalities would win the Aegis. Newbee's Faith, who was part of the Invictus Gaming roster that won The International 2012, was also denied his second TI win. Liquid's victory also continued the tradition of the TI winner alternating between Chinese and Western teams.

Timeline

 * -|2017=
 * January 2nd: GH joins the team to replace BuLba.


 * -|2016=
 * May 10th: Heen joins the team as a coach.
 * August 31st: JerAx leaves the team to join OG..
 * September 1st: FATA- announces that he is taking a break from competitive play.
 * September 16th: Miracle- and BuLba join the team.


 * -|2015=
 * October 9th: Team Liquid announces the signing of, consisting of FATA-, KuroKy, MinD_ContRoL, JerAx and MATUMBAMAN.


 * -|2014=
 * March 26th: Liquid parts ways with FLUFFNSTUFF.
 * April 14th: DeMoN joins Liquid.
 * July 29th: DeMoN's contract expires, and, with no new contract, he leaves Liquid.
 * August 4th: Liquid announces wayto is leaving the team.
 * August 29th: Liquid announce that BuLba and qojqva have been released, and the team would be going inactive.
 * October 7th: Liquid announce that TC has officially left the organization.


 * -|2013=
 * September 21st: ixmike88 leaves the active roster to pursue other Dota activities.
 * September 22nd: Traded Korok for waytosexy with.
 * September 25th: Former player qojqva joins the team.


 * -|2012=
 * December 6th: Team Liquid announces a Dota 2 team consisting of TC, FLUFFNSTUFF, ixmike88, BuLba and Korok.