Nobody can deny that Dota 2 is one of the biggest esports out there, with huge prize pools for most tournaments. TI 9, which ended just a couple off weeks ago, had over $34m USD in payouts – which is just insane.
However, many have been frustrated that Valve don’t do enough to support their tier-two scene. That is true up to a point, as the prize pools there are nowhere near what they are in the DPC events.
Despite Valve’s under-appreciation of the scene, organisations such as WePlay! have decided to support the tier two space by organizing their own online tournament involving 20 teams. Let’s take a look at the teams participating and what to expect in the battle for $50,000 USD.
Tournament format
Twelve out of the twenty teams have been directly invited, while the others had to earn their spot through regional qualifiers. The interesting thing to note here is that four out of the twelve teams are placed directly into the Quarterfinal, completely skipping the Group Stage altogether.
The sixteen remaining teams will be divided into four GSL groups consisting of four teams each. Similar to other tournaments, all matches here will be best-of-one, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the Playoffs.
The eight teams that survived the groups will join the four auto-promoted. Despite the fact that this event is fairly large, there will strangely not be a Lower Bracket in play. This means that teams need to be extra careful in these best-of-three matches, as they’ll only get one shot at advancement.
Thankfully we will have a best-of-five Grand Final, where the winner will take home $30,000.
Participating teams
J.Storm
Undeniably the biggest name at the tournament so far is J.Storm. The NA team has one of the deadliest rosters right now, which is a clear sign that they are going to be a major threat in the upcoming DPC season. We also think they’ll be the tournament favorites here too. After all, they have a TI winner and Roman “Resolut1on” Fominok, a legendary players in the CIS region.
Old But Gold
The second famous team in attendance is Ilya “Illidan“ Pivcaev’s CIS quad Old But Gold. They had a decent start to last year, even eliminating the OG juggernaut at one of the minors. Despite this, they just couldn’t navigate their way through the TI qualifiers. However, it’s a new season and hopefully they won’t repeat the same mistakes again.
FlyToMoon
The last team on our list, but definitely not the least, is FlyToMoon. Even though they are yet to win a big event, the team still managed to take part in some of Valve’s DPC tournaments. This goes a long way in proving they have all the required talent to put up a strong challenge to other top teams.
WePlay! Reshuffle Madness 2019 is due to begin this Saturday. Apart from the teams mentioned above, there will be other big names such as Ad Finem, Team Singularity, Hippomaniacsm, CyberDogs, REDCODE and more battling it out for glory.
You can check out more information on the tournament at WePlay!’s official website and tune in to the stream tomorrow at https://www.twitch.tv/team/weplay.
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