One thing from the after-game discussion: the much-maligned '5 invincible couriers' has been reduced to 1 (vincible?) courier, as of Saturday 18 August. One HN comment says more heroes were available? I haven't seen anything on that yet.

Yes, that changes the game completely. The fact that there's only one courier and that it's vincible, which is regular Dota, is game changing. Pain killed it a few times, and OpenAI steered it at multiple moments. The courier is like a flying hero which everyone has access to, flying means it simply passes through terrain. One of the spells is temporary invulnerability under a long cooldown after usage, which OpenAI did use multiple times in the appropriate situations. The other spells is simply go to secret shop, deliver items, return items to stash, and one or two more.

courier reduction appears to have reduced aggression and OA5 went for Roshan (twice) this time, even sacrificing part of their base. That's a big change.

Yes, but it also gave the Aegis, which grants a hero which carries it a one time Resurrection, to the more trivial heroes, i.e not the damage dealers and more to the supports that contribute way less. Depends on the strategy of course. Damage dealers tend to be more squishy, like a glass cannon.

An easy way to solve it might be to in the Team Spirit algorithm simply check which teammate increases win probability when it picks up the aegis.

neither team drafted? huh? Isn't that much of the point? Sure, it ensures OA5 doesn't get a huge lead in the draft like it did in the Benchmark, but surely that's part of the game...

Blitz, the Asian commentator during the match, selected the heroes for Team Human. Obviously drafting is important as otherwise the bot wouldn't predict the game before this one at 8% win and lose, when the chat chose a terrible line-up for OpenAI. I still think OpenAI drafted for itself and Blitz did for the human team in real time (i.e choosing heroes after seeing what the other team chose, banning heroes, etc) but the OpenAI team couldn't do it live on stage with Pain live-drafting. Such an annoyance, I bet they will solve it for tomorrow, otherwise that's ridiculous. We were also missing the win probability. I don't mind that OpenAI doesn't announce what they expect the win probability is at to the human opponents, since it alters how the human team plays, but for the casters and viewers I think it's important. I expect the reason why we lacked win probability was the same why there wasn't an on-stage draft.

more odd, erratic, clearly mistaken behavior by OA5 when it gets behind:

It seemed to lack short-term decision making. For instance the Death Prophet ultimate spell, which goes on a long cool-down, summoning those ghosts, is absolutely vital for them in team-fights. It does a lot of damage and after the spell is over heals the Death Prophet with the damage it dealt. It makes no sense to use it to kill jungle creeps, as you're far into the game and are expecting team pain to be on your doorstep the moment you make a mistake like reducing your damage output for a team-fight. Damage is one part why team-fights are won. If you just drag up your damage artificially you'll just win fights (for instance give 50000 damage and you will kill everyone in one hit). It's fine to do a mistake like that early on in the game, as that doesn't mean you instantly lose when they push and kill your melee and range barracks.

they're very upset about scheduling)

Most people want to see the upper-bracket games, so OpenAI delays it with like an hour, putting the largest audience Russia/Europe super late into the night if they want to watch it live. Think 4-5AM in Russia. Upper bracket games first and then OpenAI would solve this..