Prodigious Dota 2 player Ludwig “zai” Wahlberg has signed on with Romania-based Kaipi as a support player, a year after staying on the sidelines.
One of the most lauded players in Dota 2, zai’s latest competitive appearance was in TI5 last year. The 18-year-old Swede then surprised everyone by choosing to complete his studies last fall, rather than to focus on of eSports’ more major disciplines.
Zai had stormed the Dota 2 scene in recent years – his support role in Evil Geniuses already earned him universal acclaim since 2014. His playmaking is consistent and is always capable of pushing every hero’s farming ability to the max.
He then joined Team Secret in the next year, where he played in his preferred offlane role and contributed heavily to the team’s dominating tournament spree in the summer of 2015.
Although his 8-month period with the team had been nothing short of being utterly successful, he revealed that he will go on hiatus in an interview with DotaBlast last June.
At present, Zai will play support for Kaipi, replacing “Masakary” Nechifor on the roster and compete alongside former Cloud9-duo Pittner “bOne7” Armand and WehSing “SingSing” Yuen.
“After a successful TI5 open qualifier run, disappointing regional qualifier request, and failing to reach the main qualifiers for Starladder and The Summit, we decided it was time for a change,” Joe Eastham, team manager of Kaipi had explained.
“Masakary was the player to make way and we thank him for all his help,” he added. “Bone7 had been speaking to Zai for a few weeks and he decided to join us on Monday evening to join us on our quest to win TI6!”
Indeed, Kaipi will likely be among the teams that would compete in the upcoming International qualifiers. Everyone will not pull their punches as the tournament’s prize pool steadily increases despite having just breached the $7 million mark.