The seventh season of Dota 2 Champions League ended on February 16, and the very next day, the tournament operator Epic Esports Events announced the next D2CL season. It starts on February 21 and will last for nearly a month. 14 teams from the CIS and Europe will take part in the eighth season of the championship. However, they will fight for a very modest prize fund. However, within the framework of D2CL, it is always the same. Teams participate in these tournaments not for money, but for training during the break between Dota Pro Circuit seasons. D2CL does a great job with this function. In addition, victory in such championships always gives teams confidence in their abilities. Who is the main favourite of the eighth season of Dota 2 Champions League, and in what format the tournament will be held - in the following topic by Cybersport.Metaratings.ru.
Tournament Format
On February 17, tournament operator Epic Esports Events announced the eighth season of Dota 2 Champions League. The tournament will be held from February 17 to March 13 online. 14 teams will take part in it. They will be divided into two groups where they will play a series of round-robin matches in bo3 format. This stage of the tournament will last more than two weeks. The teams with the most points will advance to the playoff stage, where they will fight in the double-elimination system in the bo3 format. The final match will be held in bo5 format.
Tournament prize fund
The Dota 2 Champions League prize pool, as always, will be $50,000. Of these, the winner of the tournament will receive $20,000, and the rest of the team will play only $30,000 thousand. It is obvious that the last places in D2CL get a penny, but, as already mentioned, this tournament is not played for money, but for experience. The distribution of the prize fund by places is as follows.
- 1st place — $20,000;
- 2nd place — $10,000;
- 3rd place — $7,000;
- 4th place — $3,500;
- 5th–6th place — $2,500 each;
- 7th–8th place — $1,250 each;
- 9th–12th place — $500 each.
Tournament participants
14 teams will take part in the eighth season of Dota 2 Champions League. 12 of them received direct invites, and two more will qualify for the tournament through open qualifiers. At the moment, the composition of the championship is as follows: Alliance; Hydra; B8 Esports; Team Empire; Gambit Esports; Entity Gaming; Nemiga Gaming; Mind Games; AS Monaco Gambit; No Sorry; Lilgun; HellRaisers.
Tournament favourites
There are only two teams in this tournament that can be called the favourites of the eighth season of Dota 2 Champions League. These are HellRaisers and Entity Gaming. Both teams play at a decent level and constantly compete with each other. It's not for nothing that both HellRaisers and Entity Gaming reached the D2CL grand final in the fifth and seventh seasons. Moreover, both times it took them five cards to figure out the relationship (HellRaisers beat their opponents each time). So there is a high probability that these teams will again reach the grand final, beating everyone in their path. Moreover, now they have much less competition, since the composition of the Dota 2 Champions League participants has clearly become weaker.
Top-level contenders
There are no other really strong teams in the eighth season of D2CL, but there are several noteworthy though. They are unlikely to claim victory, but they will definitely be able to go far in the standings. These teams include Hydra, Gambit Esports, Nemiga Gaming and Mind Games. All of them have been playing together for a long time and show from time to time rather good results. So we will definitely see them somewhere in the top. Other teams, unfortunately, are pretty far from any high places.