The first season of the DPC has ended, and the winter major has been abruptly cancelled. But that's nothing to be sad or upset about - teams and players now have more time to participate in commercial tournaments. Such tournaments will likely take place in all regions soon. For example, IWO Beijing has already started in China with all the local tops taking part. In Eastern and Western Europe, we traditionally have the Dota 2 Champions League (D2CL). The league's seventh season will start on January 24 and will last the whole month. This time, many teams from the first and second divisions of the CIS and Europe will play within the D2CL. The confrontation is expected to be very interesting. Check out the Cybersport.Metaratings.ru article to find out what will happen during the seventh season of Dota 2 Champions League and who the main contender is to win.
Tournament format
On January 19, tournament operator Epic Esports Events announced the seventh season of the Dota 2 Champions League. The tournament will run from January 24 to February 17 online. There will be 18 teams taking part. Fourteen of them will spend almost a month playing in the group stage for the right to qualify for the playoffs. In the end, the top four teams will advance to the top draw. Teams ranked 5-8 will advance to the bottom draw, and the remaining six participants will leave the tournament. Also, four teams will get a direct inquest directly into the D2CL playoffs top net.
The playoffs for the seventh season of the Dota 2 Champions League will be held according to the Double Elimination system. All matches will be in beat-of-3 format. And the grand final will be beat-of-5.
The tournament prize pool
The prize pool of the seventh season of D2CL will be 50 thousand dollars. This is already a standard amount for Dota 2 Champions League. Twenty thousand dollars will go to the winner, the remaining 30,000 distributed among the 17 teams. Of course, the prize money for the other participants will be ridiculous. But the teams aren't playing D2CL for the money. There are two reasons for this. The first is that they have nothing else to do. Second, tournament practise never hurts. So money isn't everything when it comes to the Dota 2 Champions League.
- First place - $20,000;
- 2nd place - $10,000;
- 3rd place - $7,000;
- 4th place - $3,500;
- 5th-6th place - $2,500 for each team;
- 7th-8th place - $1,000 each team;
- 9th to 12th place - $500 each team.
Tournament entrants
Virtus.pro, B8 Esports, Hydra, Team Empire, AS Monaco Gambit, Gambit Esports, Brame, Nemiga Gaming, Winstrike Team, V-Gaming, Entity Gaming, COOLGUYS, CIS Rejects and one other team that will be the winner of qualification will play in the D2CL group stage.
Natus Vincere, Team Tickles, PuckChamp and HellRaisers have already been invited to the league playoffs. The teams from the playoffs are considered stronger, but this time there are also very worthy contenders in the group stage. Let's try to pick out the main favourites and underdogs of the D2CL.
Tournament favourites
In the sixth season of the Dota 2 Champions League, four teams were invited straight into the playoffs. All of them reached at least the top 4. So, the teams with the invitations are the main contenders to win. At least Team Tickles, PuckChamp and HellRaisers deserve the title. They have good spots within the DPC season, so they should be fine on D2CL. With Natus Vincere, things are a little more complicated. Sometimes the team plays cool and fights to win the grand finals against Team Tickles, and other times they lose to the tier-2 stacks without a chance. In theory, NAVI could be listed as league favourites, but we'll only do so with a pencil.
Among the teams invited to the group stage, Virtus.pro, V-Gaming, Entity Gaming and CIS Rejects are the favourites. These teams can go as far as possible or reach the top of the playoffs. By the way, Virtus.pro has never played in the D2CL before. The organization thought it was too weak a tournament for it. But now there are no alternatives, and the new roster of the Bears is not playing the best game so far, so it won't be a waste of time to practice.
The underdogs of the tournament
By and large, any team that is not on the favorites' list is automatically considered an outsider. They all have certain problems, and they certainly have no chance of winning the league. However, some line-ups might still take a shot and do well. Let it be Hydra and Brame. They had a great DPC season to handle D2CL as well. The others are unlikely to even make it into the top 8.
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