Ivan Borislavov “MinD_ContRoL” Ivanov is a professional Dota 2 player who currently plays for Team Liquid. He is considered to be one of the best players on his respective position, not only because of his incredible decision making, but also because of his large hero pool. MinD_ContRoL’s popularity in his home country (Bulgaria) is increasing every single month, most recent after Team Liquid’s TI trophy. He was even voted as one of the best sports person of the country for 2017.

But how did he get where he is today?

Many of you may not know, but before he became an offlaner, MC used to play mid for various teams, but in the end switched his positions. MinD_ContRoL’s professional career started out with a team called Vast Cast in early 2014. Later that year, the team was signed by After shock gaming. They went on and managed to win several other minor events, including the Insomnia52 ASUS RoG Dota 2 Cup LAN in the UK, and GIGABYTE Challenge #9. Around September, the team left the organization and started playing under the name Basically Unknown (BU).

Basically Unknown

BU have had big success, managing to win most of the tournaments that they took part in, despite the numerous roster changes that were made. There was a big controversy surrounding BU regarding the addition of Ar1sE, because he released a video showing private scrims between BU and another team. This resulted in a team kick by MinD_ControL(MC) only to be re-invited again two days later. Despite all that, after BU’s failure at DreamLeague, MC left the team. After that he continued to play as a stand-in for various teams, up to the post TI5 shuffle, where he joined KuroKy’s team – 5Jungs.

Team 5 Jungs & MinD_ContRoL

Team 5 Jungs consisted of KuroKy, MinD_ContRoL, FATA-, JeRax and MATUMBAMAN. They quickly proved themselves as a very promising team and were eventually “acquired” by Team Liquid. Under their new team name, they quickly established themselves at various LAN events. However, since they did not manage to achieve much at TI 6 another team shuffle had to be made. MC remained under the new roster aswell and they went on to dominate the international scene. The team’s biggest success is definitely the TI 7 victory, which ultimately made them the best team in the world (as well as one of the richest eSports players up to date).

Despite all this success, MinD_ContRoL is always a humble guy, despite having nearly a “superstar” status in his country.

MC’s Best Heroes

Beastmaster

In the past couple of months, Beastmaster has to be one of the most impactful and important hero that is played by MinD_ContRoL. He is considered to be the best at playing the hero on a competitive level. When you check a website like Dotabuff, you can see that he has around 73% win ratio from 49 professional games.

Here is some BM action from the unforgettable TI 7:

MC’s signature Hero – Nature’s Prophet

Of course, there is no way, Natures Prophet can go unmentioned. This is surely MC’s signature hero. He had a major role in helping his team to win TI7. He is always there for that vital gank, cutting waves or just helping his team get an early tower advantage. What’s more, there was a point where every single person always banned the hero first when they met Team Liquid, which proves that they all respect MinD_ContRoL’s ability to dictate the tempo of the game. He might even be considered to be a better NP player than Admiral bulldog, who is generally considered to be the sort of “king” when it comes down to ratting in dota with heroes like Lone Druid and Nature’s Prophet.

Here you can also watch some beautiful plays vs LFY:



Brewmaster

Beawmaster is a hero, which got buffed time and time again. In order to be a better pick choice not only for professional games, but for pub games alike. The hero was never loved in either scenes, mainly because there are heroes who do his role better not to mention Brewmaster has a pretty high skill-cap when it comes down to micro-controlling your ultimate, which sure makes him a “Not-go-to” hero in the lower MMR brackets.

In the past few months considering the buffs that he went through, he is becoming more and more popular and now he is nearly always either picked or banned. As an offlane hero, MinD_ContRoL is the one who has to hard job to slow down the enemy tripple lane and to do the big plays with his ult. However, Team Liquid also have different strategies, including putting MC’s Brewmaster in the mid lane. They did this in their last match versus LGD Gaming at SL i-League Invitational’s Grand Final. Since he was an ex mid-laner, he had no problems in winning LGD’s fearsome mid laner – Lu “Somnus丶M” Yao

I personally think that those three heroes are the ones that MinD_ContRoL plays most often. However their are by no means the only heroes that he is capable of playing at the highest level of Dota. He is also known for his Darkseer, Sand King and many other.

How can his performance earn you money?

As time goes on, the betting websites will eventually start to add various betting options for you to choose from in terms of eSports. For example in football, you can choose the amount of goals that each player will score and so on. In eSports, you could soon be able to choose the different amount of kills, assists, deaths, GPM, XPM and many many other statistics.

Knowing that a certain player is playing his best or one of his best heroes can motivate you to place your bet for him and potentially win some cash.

Final Thoughts

As I have already said, MinD_ContRoL is surely one of the best players at his respective position. However, no matter how good a player is, he is nothing without his team mates. Team Liquid have an astonishing mixture of talent, commitment and strive for success, which makes them a joy for the eye to watch.

What is your opinion on MinD_ContRoL? Do you think he is the best offlaner at the moment? Let us know in the comments.