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The Tournament Format and More
The International takes place in two major phases. The first phase or the Group Stage will take place between 15th August and 18th August.
In the group stages, the 18 teams are divided into two groups of nine teams each. Every team in a group play each other in a round-robin format in Best-of-two series.
A 2-0 win gives the winning team two points and the losing team nothing while a 1-1 draw will see both teams share the points.
The Top 4 teams from each group are sorted into the Upper Brackets while the teams placed 5th-8th are placed in the Lower Brackets.
The bottom team from each group is eliminated from the tournament. If two teams are tied on points in such a way that they are in separate qualification zones, tiebreakers will be organized between them.
If two teams are tied, a Best-of-two tiebreaker will take place. If more than two teams are tied, round-robin Best-of-one games will take place.
The first phase will take place behind closed doors in a studio environment with no live crowd.
The Second Phase or the Main Event will be taking place in the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai in front of a live crowd. The remaining 16 teams will be participating in a Double Elimination format.
Teams in the upper bracket will have an extra life as in if they lose a match they will get sent down to the lower bracket from where they can still get to the Grand Finals. But if a team loses in the Lower Brackets, it's all over for them.
The Lower Bracket Round 1 will have Best-of-one matches while all other rounds will have Best-of-three matches. The Grand Finals, however, will be a Best-of-five matches.
Miscellaneous Facts about TI9
The winning team will receive 44% of the entire prize pool and the coveted Aegis of Champions. 44% of the current prize pool amounts to nearly 12 Million Dollars and will certainly be life-changing for anyone who wins it.
A total of five organizations who have previously won TI will be participating in this tournament. Na'Vi (TI1), Alliance (TI3), Evil Geniuses (TI5), Team Liquid (TI7) and OG (TI8) will aim to become the first-ever organization to win the tournament twice.
As for the players, 14 previous TI winners out of 40 are participating in TI9. OG's winning roster from last year has remained intact and they are the only team entirely made up of former TI winners.
Team Liquid has retained four players from their TI7 win while their fifth, Matumbaman will participate in the tournament as part of Chaos Esports.
Evil Geniuses have two former TI winners in Sumail and S4 who won TI5 with EG and TI3 with Alliance respectively.
Team Secret and Ninjas in Pyjamas have one former TI winner each in Puppey and ppd respectively. All of them will aim to become the first-ever player to win multiple TIs.
With ddc and Faith failing to qualify and Universe being without a team, Puppey and Kuroky are the only two players who will have appeared in every TI following TI9.
The Mercedes-Benz Arena will also be the second largest Arena to host TI. The record was set by Rogers Arena, Vancouver last year when nearly 20,000 were in attendance to witness OG's miracle win.
The Mercedes-Benz Arena is expected to hold somewhere between 18,000 and 19,000 people beating out KeyArena, Seattle which hosted TI4-TI7 with a capacity of just over 15,000.
