Next Sunday, whichever team wins the world's most expensive eSports tournament – the Dota 2 International – will have earned about $176,313 for each day of the eight-day tournament.
First place receives $1,410,623, drawn from a total prize pool of just over 2.8 million bucks (and counting; every time someone buys the Compendium – which acts as a sort of interactive program for the event and gets you bonus loot as well – Valve pitches in another $2.50 to the prize pool).
All told, that's a boatload of money, so it's no surprise that the three days of preliminary group competition provided some brilliant games. So who made it to the finals and who is going home without a slice of the pie?
The most dominant team has been Alliance (of Sweden) who smashed their way through Group B with an incredible 14-0 win-loss record, thanks to wins over defending champions Invictus Gaming (iG), and easier victories against low-tablers Virtus Pro, LGD International, Neolution.Orange and wildcard winner RattleSnake. They also got over the porridge-sponsored TongFu, who ended the group stage with an 8-6 record, and secured a place in the winner bracket.
Alliance - the best thing to come out of Sweden since The Final Countdown?
2011 International Champions Na'Vi (Ukraine) came out on top in Group A with an 11-3 record, their only defeats coming in the tied match against LGD and at the hands of Fnatic, who finished up in third place with a 9-5 record. DK came in second at 10-4, which is probably a fitting result considering they came out on top when they went head to head with Fnatic on day two, with DK winning the first game off the back of exceptional Anti-Mage carry play from BurNIng (who picked up a double kill inside the first minute and never really stopped kicking heads thereafter), and then rolled smoothly through the second game with some canny hero picks and solid team-play.
While they weren't necessarily bad, the Russian representatives of Virtus Pro (3-11) and aforementioned wildcarders RattleSnake (3-11) suffered badly in the group stages, but spare a thought for Malaysia's Invasion MUFC who finished with a 0-14 record. Ouch.
The biggest talking point thus far is probably the form of 2012 winners iG, who were sitting in the middle of group B with a 6-6 record at the end of day two, then wound up in a must-win situation against Team Liquid to secure a spot in the winner bracket… which they did, ending with an 8-6 record. The members of this team are no strangers to clawing their way out of tricky situations – last year, after a dominant group stage, they dropped into the losers bracket of the finals and had to beat four teams on the trot to claim the championship – so it will be interesting to see how they go from here.
2012 winners iG.
Elsewhere, Malaysia's Orange also wound up with an 8-6 record in group B, having played some exceedingly good Dota – their 1-1 set draw with iG was a standout for day two – and the US-Canadian axis of Dignitas fought to a respectable 8-6, before losing a tiebreaker against LGD, seeing the latter move into the winner bracket.
The main event kicks off on August 7 and runs through until August 11. It's shaping up to be a ripper of a tournament, and you can catch it live or delayed here or check out the schedule ahead of time. I'll also be reporting from Seattle to bring you updates on all the excitement, tantrums and smack talk (or just the games) during the finals series.
Michael Blake is an Aussie freelance writer and PC nutter. You can follow him on IGN here, or take part in the Aussie team's antics on Facebook or Twitter.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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