Thread by @gdb

Finished last staff meeting before event. Doors open in 25 mins! #openai5

Doors open in 2!

Doors are open!

Starting to fill up.

Stream begins!

.@cbd introduction of OpenAI Five!

Game begins. Currently 1-0, first blood to OpenAI Five!

Now 2-1! Humans got a kill.

Not sure of the MMR of the audience team playing currently. Currently 7-3, OpenAI up by only 2k gold.

OpenAI going to push top T1 tower, already taken mid.

OpenAI taken too T2, pressuring too T3. Grouping up and pushing early.

OpenAI in their base, finished up top ranged barracks. Casters say they seem to always take ranged first, in pro scene take melee first.

OpenAI up by 9k gold. Pushing more efficiently. 16-4 killls.

Casters call the game in favor of OpenAI after 12 min. OpenAI vs audience team. 21-4, 11k gold advantage.

Slightly ahead of schedule due to short audience game. Will start in 5 mins vs our main team of the day!

Our main team getting ready to play. These are some of the best players out there.

Audience getting ready for first “for real” match.

Players huddling. Sounds like they have a good game plan cooking.

Steam account crashing on one of the caster PCs. Always something :). Will have a backup swapped in shortly and get started.

Player introductions begin!

All players on stage!!

Revealed: OpenAI Five now supports drafting. Adds a new layer of dynamism to the game! Very excited to see how these top 99.95th percentile players handle it.

Drafting in progress now.

Lineups finalized:
- OpenAI Five (Radiant): Lich, Gyrocopter, Sniper, Death Prophet, Lion
- Dire: Earthshaker, Necrophos, Crystal Maiden, Razor, Shadowfiend

After draft, OpenAI Five declares a 95% win probability for OpenAI. Bug or real? Will find out.

Snipers stack Shrapnel — casters say it’s a questionable move.

First blood to OpenAI Five!

Casters say that Five is mixing up the typical roles.

Some five heroes idling walking back and forth. Looks kinda funny but we see that all the time — seems to be calculated not random.

3-0 kills for Five.

Five does a good job of rescuing a Gyro by wrapping a hero around to distract an enemy.

Five hero going back to base, casters say it’s the first time today they’ve seen it.

Gold is about even, but Five now thinks it has a 98% chance of winning.

Immediate smoke after getting 4th kill so they can reposition.

Five now thinks 99% chance of win. Really hope that’s real ;). Very non obvious to the humans.

Team human gets first kill, now 5-1! Crowd goes wild.

Five places good sentries which detect a smoked up shadowfiend.

6-1 kills, net worth about even.

First big team fight! Humans lose 3 heroes, Five loses 1.

Game lagging a bit, currently paused. Will resume and not count the match if lag too bad.

Game resumed.

12-3 to Five, Five up by 2k gold.

Casters say: 10 mins into audience game, Five was taking barracks. Humans pushing OpenAI much closer to the limits, holding their own.

15-4 kills, to Five.

Five traps three human heroes!

OpenAI kills 4 heroes, losing none.

24-4 to OpenAI, 5k gold in favor of OpenAI. Just took a T2 tower.

Casters point out that several human heroes are hard to activate in this game. Good supporting evidence for Five’s post-draft confidence.

Humans get another kills! 24-5 now.

2-2 trade, now 27-7. Casters say it was a good trade for humans. Think humans will do a better job with shadowblade.

All 5 Five heroes moving into enemy base.

3 humans killed, MoonMeander buys back, heroes head out.

30-8 kills, humans narrowed gold gap to 5k.

Five attacks base, wipes entire human team without losing any hero.

35-8, Five up by 10k gold.

Five’s sniper uses assassinate, forces enemy back to heal up.

Going in for mid barracks. Humans lose 4 heroes.

Humans call gg (good game, resigning the game)!!!!! OpenAI Five wins game number one versus top 99.95th percentile Dota players.

That was an extremely well played match by the humans. Feel they made some mistakes and game 2 will go differently.

Team Human

Game 2 will begin shortly.

Showing a new tool: a win prediction interface interpreting what Five thinks of the enemy hero picking.

Casters saying that the drafting interface validating how much draft order really matters.

Casters think hero picking better for humans than Five thinks. Mostly due to Riki, an invisible hero.

Five declares a win probability of 90% out of the gate. Will see how real it is.

Blitz trolls by saying he predicts 95% that his team wins :)

Human team smokes up, going invisible.

FIRST BLOOD TO THE HUMANS! Well played @Blitz_DotA

Casters say lanes make more sense to them this game, not having two cores in one lane.

1-1 now, net worth basically even.

1-2, in favor of Five. Net worth even.

Casters noting that Five uses lots of smokes, curious why.

Five declares 95 win prob.

Casters say that pulling is very effective against Five

1-4 now in favor of Five.

Casters say it feels like Five is reacting to how team human played in game 1. Not accurate as it does not learn from these games but shows range of play style.

A Five bot barely escapes by popping a salve at exactly the right point, then another enemy comes in for the kill. Crowd goes wild!

3-7, similar net worth. Gyro for Five gets a double kill.

Casters talk about how Five focuses on making great lane rotations and if you do a better job of it than your opponents you get a huge advantage.

4-9 kills now, in favor of Five. Net worth is still even. Neck and neck!!!

Heroes from Five dive under T1 mid tower. Successfully clears out nearby defenders and takes the tower.

4-11 kills, net worth remains even. Casters saying net worth distribution on team human a lot better than game 1.

4-12, Five up by 1k gold. Pushing bottom T2 tower.

6-13, humans get a big kill. Applause from crowd!!

14 mins in, 6-16, Five up by 1k gold. Five has a weird ward that pays off.

8-17, humans kill Gyro. Another round of applause, well played!

Five’s win prob had hit 100%-epsilon, down to 98%.

Team fight in mid. Five drops a sentry, can see Riki. Five chases Merlin’s, who almost escapes with almost no health, Five barely gets the kill.

HUMANS GET A DOUBLE KILL WITH EARTHSHAKER. Now 11-19, humans up by 1k net worth. Not over yet!!

Humans tried to press their advantage, end up losing 3 heroes. Not clear who won the trade.

11-22, even net worth. 19 mins in.

Five places an observer in the same place humans dewarded before.

Another team fight. Five got some lucky timing against Riki, 2 kills to Five.

Five hasn’t lost any towers, has already taken 2 T2s, even net worth.

Five pushing mid barracks.

Five declares 99% win prob.

Five wipe entire human team, losing a single hero. Mid barracks have been destroyed.

12-29 kills, Five up by 3k gold.

22 mins in. 12-31. Five up by 4K gold.

4 human heroes killed. 8k gold to Five.

Second set of barracks destroyed. Casters now say Five’s confidence is justified.

12-36 kills, 11k gold advantage at 24 mins.

Humans call gg for game 2!!!! OpenAI Five has won a best of three vs top 99.95th percentile of Dota players. Extremely good play by the human team. Our system is ready to take on the top professionals at The International later this month.

We’re going to do something special for game 3. Stay tuned, this will be cool.

Some cool photos from the day so far:

Panel with Szymon and Psyho finishing up now. Game 3 coming soon.

.@Blitz_DotA and team say that courier change things a bit but it feels close to normal Dota. “Feels like playing a really good team.”

Waiting for game 3.

Human players say the record stands despite lag. Lag-free would let them push the limits of Five in extreme cases more but not change outcome.

Casters back up on main screen. About to announce format for third game.

This time: Twitch chat and audience will pick the heroes that OpenAI Five plays. Expecting an adversarial lineup. Should be interesting!!!!

Casters asking humans to pick heroes that force Five out of the comfort zone that they’ve observed so far.

Audience is shouting Slark, Twitch chat overwhelmingly the same.

Not showing Five’s expected win probabilities until after the draft completes.

Twitch picks Sven and Axe. Trying to pick adversarial lineup for Five, most likely 5 melees.

Last picks: Riki and Queen of Pain. Queen is ranged

Win probabilities revealed now: Five thinks it has a 2.9% chance of winning after audience adversarially picks its hero lineup. Crowd goes wild!! This will be an exciting game.

Casters are surprised the win probs go so low.

Casters wondering if they’ll see much jungling.

Five has four heroes at bottom lane. This is something not seen in normal human play. Bots get first blood!!!!

Five has 4 heroes in bottom lane, really want to take that T1. Chase enemy hero into the trees and get the kill.

Five used smoke creatively, missed the details but will be good to review later.

Now 4-4, equal net worth.

Big team fight, looked like Five was going to lose a hero, and then at last minute Sven turned it around. Killed 3 human heroes, 0 Five heroes.

5-7 kills in favor of Five, good about equal.

Team fight around T1 bottom tower, 1-1 trade.

6-8 humans up by 2k gold. Five thinks 10% chance it wins.

Humans take their first tower out of all three games!!! Applause!!

Game is 7-10, humans up by 1k gold. Casters say game is going well for the humans, but MoonMeander is shut down.

Five pushed mid T1 tower, Sven popped his ultimate earlier than humans normally would, turned out to be a very good decision.

OpenAI Five now estimates 17% chance of win. Making some progress!

8-12 kills in favor of Five. Net worth even. Just had a pretty even 1 for 1 trade.

Now 10-13 after 11:45. Even net worth. Had an even fight, Five lost some heroes but did a lot of damage to T1.

11-13 with humans up by 1k net worth. Back to Five predicting a 7% chance of winning.

Five sacrificed himself to take a tower, which was in deny range. Casters: “that was something else.”

Casters: game 3 is heating up.

Slark is cutting the wave on top and rotated towards bottom lane.

14-15, net worth about even. Win prob at 10% for Five.

15-15, even net worth at 15 mins! This game is extremely different from the previous two.

Humans get a kill taking the lead in kills for the first time all day!!!!

Unusual play by Five. Axe used call (usually offensive, but used in a defensive way) and bought time to teleport out.

Win prob steady at 9% for OpenAI Five. Now 17-15 at 18:30, 3k gold advantage for human. Queen of Pain just checked Roshan.

Triple kill for the humans! 21-15, humans up by 4K gold. Win prob now 5%.

Five trades two heroes for one human heroes. Probably an even trade.

OpenAI Five declares the win probability to be less than 1%. This is the closest thing to a gg that they do!!! Great plays by the human team.

Humans at 30 kills, Five at 17. 11k gold advantage for the humans at 24:25.

Five now in desperation mode. Now trying everything it can for the game to last as much as possible. Moving heroes forward to try to cut enemy creep waves so humans cannot push.

Slark buys 40s by jumping intro trees while humans camp outside.

Casters excited to see Five do buybacks, should happen soon.

Queen of Pain buys back, the first time this version of OpenAI Five has *ever* bought back versus humans, including our previous testing matches.

Now 42-20 kills, 22k net worth in favor of humans.

Casters see it’s still 1% win prob. Say Five is not confident, but is not giving up.

Humans are about to take their second barracks. Humans up on kills at 49-22, up by 30k net worth.

And that’s game!!!!! Humans win game 3! Congratulations to @Blitz_DotA and friends!!!!

This completes our gameplay segment of the Benchmark. OpenAI team will now do panel explaining more about how we build OpenAI Five.

Today has been an emotional ride. Moment of panic after Five declared such high win probabilities. But seems like those predictions were warranted. Extremely proud of the OpenAI team and very excited to continue improving the system as we prepare for The International.

OpenAI devs + @Blitz_DotA panel!

Blitz: despite the couriers feels like a legit really good team, plays really well and constantly pressures you.

Jakub: The biggest discovery is how far these algorithms, which have been around for a long time, can go when powered with enough scale.

Signatures of today’s teams — OpenAI devs and human players.

And here is a picture of some OpenAI team members :). Super grateful to be working with all of you!