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The International 2018 is the 8th edition of TI. Also, since Valve has introduced DPC, TI8 is the concluding tournament of DPC. For the first time, the tournament will be held in Canada, Rogers Arena – Vancouver. For the very first time, a point system based series of Minor and Major tournament were used to determine the direct invites.
Tournament Format
Beside the DPC point system based direct-invites, the rest of the tournament is organized in 4 different stages. Open Qualifier, Regional Qualifier, Group Stage and Main event. For a tournament this big you need a huge time to organize the qualifier. Different Regions and a huge pool of teams attending the qualifier makes it tough for most of the team that has not invited directly.
Open Qualifiers were held online from June 14th to June 17th. 12 regional Single-elimination Open Qualifiers were organized with 2 brackets for each region. The winners of each Open qualifier advanced to the Main Qualifier.
6 Regional Qualifiers were held online from June 18th to June 25th. The winners of each Main qualifier advanced directly to The International 2018. The Runners-up of China, South East Asia, and North America Main qualifier advanced directly to The International. Only winners will advance to The International for CIS and other regions. The 3rd place team of North America Main qualifier advanced to The International directly.
Group Stage begins from August 15th to August 18th with 18 teams. All 18 teams are divided into two groups. 9 teams in each group will play in a Round Robin format. All matches will be played in a Best-of-Two series. The Top four teams of each group will advance to the Upper Bracket of the Main Event. The last placed team in both groups will be eliminated and the rest of the teams will proceed to the Lower Bracket of the Main Event.
Main Event will begin from August 20th to August 25th. 16 teams will play in a double-elimination format over the 6 days. 8 teams will begin in Upper Bracket and rest of the teams will begin in Lower Bracket. First, lower bracket rounds are Best of 1 while other rounds are best of 3 and the Grand Final is a best of 5 series, The first team to win 3 games out of the 5 will be declared as the Champions of The International 2018.
