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What's at stake?
The year's first Dota 2 major is underway and the preliminary rounds have ended. Sixteen teams began competing for a prize pool of $1,000,000 dollars on 4th March at the Polyvalent Hall in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
The winners will bag half of the prize pool and go home with $500,000. The runners-up will get $200,000 and 3rd place and 4th place would get $90,000 each. Places 5th to 8th will round up the prize pool getting $30,000 each.
One million dollars is not all that they are competing for as the tournament is also worth 1,500 all important Dota Pro Circuit Points. These points are really important as these points are the sole deciders to which teams get an invite to The International 2018.
The 8 teams with maximum points will get an invite to The International 2018, which is widely considered to be the biggest e-sports tournament of the year.
Qualification to The International is always very important as last year's International boasted a prize pool of $24,787,916. Out of the 24.7 million dollars, only $1.6 million dollars were sponsored by Dota 2 developers, Valve.
$23.1 million dollars were fan sponsored as 25% of all in-game purchases made by the players went to the prize pool. Given the current demographic, The International 2018 should have a prize pool just below $30 million dollars.
The only way to get an invite is to accumulate the previously mentioned DPC Points. Thus, majors are so important to players and organizations alike.
The Participating Teams
Ten Teams received direct invites to The Bucharest Major while 6 more had to go through qualification to be able to participate in the tournament.
The 10 teams that received direct invites are as follows:
Team Liquid
Newbee
Evil Geniuses
Natus Vincere
Mineski
CompLexity
Vici Gaming
LGD.Forever Young
Virtus.Pro
Team Secret
The other 6 teams that qualified through offline qualifiers are:
Orgless Gaming or Team OG as they are more popularly known as, had to go through the European Qualifications to qualify for the major. OG are a staggering 4 time Major Champions. The fact which makes this feat exceptional is there has been only 5 majors.
Vega Squadron won the CIS qualifier to win the right to represent Russia in the Bucharest Major.
VGJ.Thunder won the Chinese Qualifiers and became the 4th Chinese team in the Major.
TNC Pro Team, the Filipino powerhouse won the South East Asian qualifiers.
OpTic Gaming won the North American qualifiers.
PaiN Gaming won the South American qualifiers to complete the 16 teams of the major.
The Tournament thus far
The tournament followed the modified Swiss System where basically every team faces each other once in a Best of 1 and the teams with the same win-loss record keeps facing each other. If a team wins 3 games, they go through to the play-offs and if they lose 3, they get eliminated.
Teams which got a 3-0 record:
Evil Geniuses and VGJ.Thunder qualified for the play offs with a perfect 3-0 record.
EG defeated newcomers paiN Gaming and both of The International 2017's finalists Team Liquid and Newbee. VGJ.Thunder beat Vici Gaming, Team Secret and TNC Gaming to maintain their perfect record.
Teams which qualified 3-1:
Newbee fell short of Evil Geniuses but defeated Vega Squadron, OG and compLexity to qualify 3-1. Virtus.Pro the fan favorite Russian team suffered a defeat at the hands of OpTic Gaming but overcame LGD.Forever Young, TNC Gaming and Na'Vi to go through to the play-offs. Team Secret defeated compLexity, paiN and OpTic Gaming but lost to Vega Squadron.
Teams which qualified 3-2:
Team Liquid, the defending TI champions had a rough start as they lost to EG and compLexity. But victories against LFY, Vici and OG put them through to the play-offs. OpTic Gaming had a rollercoaster preliminary as they alternated wins and losses. Claiming victories over Virtus.Pro, OG and compLexity but losing to TNC and Team Secret. TNC Gaming was the final team to qualify after beating OpTic, Mineski and Na'Vi. However, they had lost to VGJ.Thunder and Virtus.Pro.
Teams that were eliminated:
Out of the 16 participating teams, 8 went crashing out of the preliminaries. Half of the invitees were eliminated in the prelims.
LGD.Forever Young, who managed to reach the upper bracket finals of TI7 last year went out with a 0-3 record as did underdogs Vega Squadron. Mineski who have been in a rough patch went out 1-3 managing only one victory over Vega.
First time major participants paiN Gaming had low expectations and were eliminated with a 1-3 record as well.
The biggest upset however came when Vici Gaming who had been in incredible form, finishing 2nd in ESL Katowice 2018, were eliminated after a 1-3 record. comPlexity who were also considered underdogs crashed out with a 2-3 record.
The reinvented Na'Vi under the leadership of Danil "Dendi" Ishutin got eliminated 2-3. Record 4 time major winners OG continued with their slump in form as they were kicked out of Bucharest by Liquid stretching their record to 2-3.
The upcoming play-off fixtures
The play-offs start with a draw between 8 remaining teams to seed them in 4 traditional quarter final games. Then the brackets are naturally followed into the grand finals.
Every play-off game will be contested in Best of 3 matches except the Grand Final which will have a Best of 5 format. The matches will be played in front of a live crowd in the Polyvalent Hall.
The first game will start at 09:00 GMT on 9th March and will be followed by 2 more quarter final games. The final quarter final game and the two semi finals will be played on 10th March, same time. The Grand Final will be contested on 11th of March at 12:00 Noon GMT.
VGJ.Thunder vs TNC Gaming
VGJ.Thunder has been on a tear as they won the China qualifiers and went on to get a 3-0 record. But they are up against South East Asia's only representative TNC. The teams are evenly matched on paper, but going by their recent form, VGJ has to be the favorite.
Author's Pick: VGJ.Thunder
Newbee vs Team Secret
Newbee were the grand finalists of TI7 last year. While Secret always seems to struggle finding their form. While Clement "Puppey" Ivanov's team has been performing well recently, Newbee might be too big of an obstacle to overcome.
Author's Pick: Newbee
Evil Geniuses vs Team Liquid
The best match on paper in the Quarter Finals stage. Liquid are the best Dota 2 team in the world now but EG have been on a rampage, pun intended, ever since Rasmus "MISERY" Filipsen and Kanishka 'Sam' "BuLba" Sosale joined the team as Captain and Coach respectively.
This should be a nail biter from start to finish. But if I had to pick one, I'd go with Liquid as they show more determination and character when it comes to high pressure situations.
Author's Pick: Team Liquid
Virtus.Pro vs OpTic Gaming
Virtus.Pro have been in great form winning the last big LAN event at ESL Katowice. OpTic and VP have faced each other once this tournament and OpTic came out on top. Although this game is unpredictable, I would go with Virtus.Pro to clean sweep OpTic with ease.
Author's Pick: Virtus.Pro
The Hero metas prevalent in this tournament
Like every other period of Dota's history, this tournament has its 'meta' by which the hero picks are made. A total of 73 heroes have been picked by the teams throughout the tournament in 33 games.
Out of 115 available heroes among 42 were not selected even once. This list includes popular pub heroes like Anti Mage, Pudge, Phantom Assassin, Bloodseeker etc.
The highest picked hero of the tournament has been Gyrocopter with a 61% pick rate and a 58.82% win rate. Other position 1 or 2 heroes which has been popular are Death Prophet at 45% and Puck 27%.
The best win rate with at least 10 games played is Witch Doctor boasting a 69.23% win rate off of 13 games. Witch Doctor is followed by Death Prophet with 61.54% from 13 games. Death Prophet is followed by Gyrocopter.
It is also worth noting that Elder Titan has a 66.67% win rate off of 9 matches.
Gyrocopter has the best KDA per game for any hero picked over 10 times with an average 8.06 kills and 12.12 assists per game. Death Prophet comes second with 7.85 kills and 9.77 assists per game. Gyro has also been the most durable hero with an average 3.18 deaths per game.
As for the banned heroes, Omniknight leads the charge with being banned 20 times out of 33 games and being picked in just 5 out the remaining 13. Chen is the second most feared hero with 18 bans to his name. Razor is the most banned carry with 17 bans.
Surprisingly enough, Gyrocopter has been banned 12 times in the tournament. Coupled with its 17 picks, only 4 games have seen no involvement at all from Gyrocopter.
