Unlike other esports disciplines where players can compete in the number of titles, medals and other attributes, DotA 2 has the only measure of success: the amount of money you win. Per one year, no other competitive esports game has the same mass of prize money for players. Even if we ignore The International that has been refreshing its own records of prize pools regularly, more than 6.5 million dollars are being played only during DPC tournaments. And there are many other online competitions, events like ESP One Hamburg, etc.
So, at the very start of the season, YEsportsbet.com experts decided to distract from DotA 2 betting to go in for the only goal: to count someone else’s money. In this article, you’ll find top 20 richest DotA 2 players of the late 2019. The decade is about to end, and it is a good time to summarize its results.
Richest DotA 2 Players: The Non-Winners
The fact that The International winners of recent years dominate the list of top 20 shouldn’t wonder anyone. That is why we start with richest players who never raised the desired Aegis above their heads, but still entered this top 20.
There are just three of them: Tal ‘Fly’ Aizik, Ludwig ‘Zai’ Wåhlberg and the Chinese prince Xy ‘fy’ Linsen. Every player of the trio showed good results and had long-lasting victorious periods.
For Fly, it was the time with OG. Fly won four “classic” Majors as their captain: ESL One Frankfurt 2015, Manila Major 2016, Boston Major 2016 and the epic Kiev Major 2017 in Ukraine. After that, Tal had a slight recession period that stopped right after he joined Evil Geniuses. Under his leadership, EG didn’t win much, but were stably reaching top-3 places of every competition starting with The International 2018.
Zai’s story is different. In one way or another, this Swedish pro has been regularly winning tournaments since 2015. His best results came while he worked together with Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov. Everything began with the victorious series of the Team Secret’s “star roster before TI5 followed by the inactive period, 1.5 years in ppd’s team and the TI6 top-3 place. Secret again became the new beginning in Ludwig’s career: with them, he won The Chongqing Major and reacted the 4th line of TI9.
To mention the next richest DotA 2 player, we need to jump over some list positions. Fy, who is also known as F-God, is stable as the Great Wall of China. No, seriously. This guy remains among absolute top DotA 2 players since 2014 when he got the 2nd place of TI4. He entered top-4 of TI5, but his greatest glory came to him exactly during two recent years. While being the captain of the strongest Chinese team – PSG.LGD – he never fell lower than top-6 of any Major event. He was one buy-back behind his TI8 victory, and took the third place of the home TI9 competition. He is the Prince of the Chinese DotA not by accident. The only thing he lacks to become the King is Aegis.
Great Veterans
In this chapter, we’ll talk about such players as Saahil ‘UNiVeRsE’ Arora, Peter ‘ppd’ Dager, Clinton ‘Fear’ Loomis, Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov and Gustav ‘s4’ Magnusson.
The first three are The International 2015 winners from Evil Geniuses. Actually, that victory was their greatest achievement, and the peak of their careers ended during the 2016 when they split and chose their ways separately.
Fear even decided to retire from pro gaming and became a coach but couldn’t stay away from the game for too long. Nowadays, he plays for J.Storm. Sometimes, the team even makes it to LAN events, but it seems that Clinton won’t be able to overcome his past achievements.
In a turn, ppd and UNiVeRsE were brave enough to reunite as a family under the wing of Ninjas in Pyjamas, but their season start was low enough. The team only qualified to the minor tournament in the US.
Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov is definitely the player of another caliber. At first, he is the only one entering this list among first The International champions. At second, he has literally HIS organization – Team Secret. At third, this Estonian guy continues showing results year after year by singing talented young players and then winning tournaments. The Chongqing Major became his last great victory so far.
Nobody should discard s4, too. He is 28 and still remains among the most experienced and talented hardliners of the planet. That is why many teams value him, count on him and win as a result. At the moment, he plays for EG together with Fly.
One Step Before Three Million…
…there stands Lu ‘Somnus’ Yao, aka Maybe. The midlane man, he devoted his entire career to LGD. In fact, this player became the biggest The International 2015 revelation. After that performance, the Chinese multigaming organization offered him a 4-year contract. Back then, their decision seemed to be madness. But their bet played excellently for them, because Yao has been considered as the strongest midlaner of China throughout the whole time.
A (Recent) Derelict Talent
Sumail ‘SumaiL’ Hassan and Lasse ‘MATUMBAMAN’ Urpalainen took the top 10 and 11 positions in the list of top 20 richest DotA 2 players.
If anyone would be asked to record the formula of SumaiL, it would look like the following for sure: talent, more talent, then a skill mixed with some inflated sense of importance, and everything packed into a big body of Storm Spirit. In other words, he is second to none. The usual Pakistani guy became The International champion at his 17. Still, becoming the top player is easy compared to remaining among the best for long. SumaiL did it. Year after year, Hassan had been confidently leading EG to victories regardless of a roster, meta, or any circumstances.
Things changed this autumn when Sumail and his elder brother Yawar decided to create a team of their own. They even made it to the NA Minor, but SumaiL suddenly resigned from the roster. Rumors said, Evil Geniuses who had an active contract with the Pakistani pro intruded the situation to earn some funds on his transfer instead of letting him go for free.
The story of MATUMBAMAN is full of sadness. He had been playing for Team Liquid faithfully during two years and became The International 2017 champion together with them. But the crisis came to the organization in early 2019 and the Finnish carry was the one to blame. Of course he made it to TI9, but his Team Chaos couldn’t even pass through the group stage.
MATUMBAMAN plays for Team Secret since the 4th of November, 2019. Maybe, it is the career restart he was looking for.
Stability Standard
Several teams at once could go under that title till recent times. Still, Virtus.pro and OG weren’t even close to the same amount of job put to save the existing roster as former Team Liquid members did.
Kuro ‘KuroKy’ Salehi Takhasomi proved he was a master of “pinpoint” substitutions that allowed Liquid to reach the DotA 2 esports Olympus.
KuroKy, Miracle-, MinD_ContRol, GH – they took 6th to 9th places of our top 20 richest DotA 2 players.
This season, ambitions of players exceeded all the thinkable limits and went beyond the possibilities of the Team Liquid esports organization. That is why KuroKy decided to create his own club with blackjack and… well, you got it.
Ones of a Kind
The OG team is the only two-time DotA 2 The International champion. Moreover, they did that twice in a row, in 2018 and 2019. But the point is HOW they did it! Crazy comebacks, carry Io, unbelievable feeling of meta and that visible enjoyment on their faces – that’s how fans remembered OG at DotA 2 world championships.
The team rarely shows any results throughout the regular season, but if OG seriously plans to win the fight, there was no team able to stop them yet.
TopSon, Ceb, ana, JerAx, and of course, n0tail — all 5 OG members are at the top of our list.
Summary:
| Position | Nickname | Nationality | Earnings |
| 1 | N0tail | Denmark | $6,882,440.18 |
| 2 | JerAx | Finland | $6,470,000.02 |
| 3 | ana | Australia | $6,000,411.96 |
| 4 | Ceb | France | $5,489,233.01 |
| 5 | TopSon | Finland | $5,414,446.17 |
| 6 | KuroKy | Germany | $5,127,064.81 |
| 7 | Miracle- | Jordan | $4,692,418.88 |
| 8 | MinD_ContRol | Bulgaria | $4,483,492.36 |
| 9 | GH | Lebanon | $4,086,426.44 |
| 10 | SumaiL | Pakistan | $3,591,225.34 |
| 11 | Matumbaman | Finland | $3,557,781.04 |
| 12 | UNiVeRse | USA | $3,053,237.67 |
| 13 | ppd | USA | $2,989,719.62 |
| 14 | Somnus丶M | China | $2,916,865.42 |
| 15 | fy | China | $2,825,674.64 |
| 16 | Puppey | Estonia | $2,656,416.17 |
| 17 | Fear | USA | $2,550,384.34 |
| 18 | s4 | Sweden | $2,504,395.34 |
| 19 | Fly | Israel | $2,310,055.91 |
| 20 | Zai | Sweden | $2,296,546.31 |
Data by esportsearnings.com
That is the exact positioning of top 20 richest DotA 2 players at the beginning of the new season. Will something change after The International 2020? Nobody can know for sure.
