First Dota 2 Major of New Season: Team Liquid and Newbee First Invitees

There is only a little more than a month left before the start of the new Dota 2 season and already tournaments have started revealing the lineups for their events. The first Dota 2 Major tournament of the new season will be ESL One Hamburg and it will be played on October 28 and October 29, 2017. As the teams are preparing for the new season, the news about the first two directly invited teams for the Hamburg Major has been revealed.

Possible TI7 Rematch

ESL has announced that Team Liquid and Newbee have been the first two teams that were sent the direct invite and who confirmed their participation in this event. For those who have not been following the last season of Dota 2 competitions, these two teams made it to the grand finals of The International 7. Both teams had a very good run in that tournament but in the end, it was Team Liquid that managed to secure the prestigious title.

Team Liquid went home with the TI7 title, something that they have been waiting for many years. On the other hand, Newbee was TI champion several years ago and this was their opportunity to become the first team ever with two TI titles. Unfortunately for them, that did not happen as they simply disappeared from the final match which allowed Team Liquid to sweep the Chinese side for their first title at the International.

The number of teams that will be participating in this Major tournament is eight. These two teams will be joined by six other teams that will be fighting for their place through the qualifiers. With the introduction of the new tournament system, each Major tournament has the prize pool of one million dollars. Besides that, teams will also be fighting for the qualifiers points which will be a crucial issue for The International 8.

Qualifiers Information

Open qualifiers for the Hamburg major will be played on the second weekend of September. Up to 512 teams will be participating in the qualifiers in six regions. Out of those 512 teams, only twelve teams will advance to the next stage of the qualifiers, known as closed qualifiers. Out of those 12 teams, only four of them will come from the open qualifiers, while the remaining eight teams will receive direct invitations for the closed part of the qualifiers.

The format of the closed qualifiers will feature a single elimination bracket and the best of three matches. However, only the grand final match of the qualifiers will be played in the best of five format. Closed qualifiers will be played a week after the open qualifiers which mean that we will have the entire lineup for the ESL One Hamburg more than a month before the actual start of the tournament.

The last Dota 2 season was one of the most interesting in a long while and because of that many believe that the upcoming season will be even better. Considering that Valve introduced a new tournament and point system, things could get really interesting very quickly.