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The Dota 2 International Tournament Kicks Off Today
Valve’s biggest tournament for Dota 2, The International, begins this week. Today, four teams (Ehome, Execration, Escape Gaming, and Complexity Gaming) will play Wild Card matches to determine which two teams will be the last to join the sixteen-team roster. From August 3 to 5, the sixteen remaining teams will be split into two groups and play best-of-two sets against every team in their group.
The main event begins August 8, when the top four teams from each group will begin the double-elimination playoff tournament in the upper bracket, while the bottom four will be placed in the lower bracket, where they risk elimination after a single loss.
The prize pool for the tournament currently sits at around $19.5 million and is funded by in-game “compendium” purchases players can make. The winning team takes home $8.5 million, while the other 15 will earn somewhere between $3 million and $100,000, depending on placement. Defending champions Evil Geniuses will be defending their title from the top teams like OG, Newbee, and Team Liquid.
The tournament will run from August 2 to 13. You can watch on Twitch, the game’s website, or using Dota 2’s in-game spectator option, which lets viewers follow the action with their own camera or bind to a player’s perspective for the entire match. You can also watch past matches after they’ve aired.
Our Take
The International's enormous prize pool makes it by far the biggest in esports. Even placing last will give these teams more money than winning most other events. For my part, I’m hoping the prize pool ends up around $20-21 million so I win in-game points for guessing it correctly.
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