Everything you need to know about the Dota 2 Singapore Major

After a long time of teams only competing online in their own region, we finally see them all coming together once again for a LAN event.

Eighteen teams from all six regions will be competing for a grand prize pool of 500.000 USD. With so many teams and so much money you might already feel overwhelmed. Don’t worry however, as we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about the Singapore Major.

Important dates:

  • March 27 – March 28: Wildcard groups
  • March 29 – March 30: Group Stage
  • March 31 – April 4: Playoffs

You can watch the Singapore Major over at the ONE Esports Twitch channel.

A look at the format

Being the first major of the new DPC system, Valve has also changed around the format a little bit. Instead of everybody competing in a group stage going into a double elimination playoff like the majors of the past, this year there are three stages, with different teams starting out in different stages due to their placement in the national leagues. For example, since Team Secret ended on top of the european regional league they can start in the upper bracket of double elimination playoff right away.

On the other hand, Team Liquid has to start in the Wild Card stage because they only just qualified for the event with a fourth place finish in the european DPC league. Starting in the Wild Card stage means they first have to compete in a round robin with five other teams, to see which two are the best. Following the Wild Card Stage is the Group Stage, a round robin seeding the teams into the playoffs and eliminating the two worst teams from said group stage. The two best performing teams get to start their playoff journey in the upper bracket, the rest of them have to start in the lower bracket.

Playing with an advantage

Depending on their performance in the regional leagues every team has a different stage they start the tournament in. The best performing teams from every region will start their journey in the upper bracket of the playoff stage. These teams are Team Secret, Invictus Gaming, Fnatic, Virtus.pro, Evil Geniuses and beastcoast. All of these teams will be guaranteed a top twelve placement because of the format. Especially Team Secret, Invictus Gaming, Virtus Pro and Evil Geniuses are teams to keep an eye on. Many experts have said that these are teams that have the potential to win the major as a whole.

All of them have been dominating their home regions. Question remains if the skill of their home region can compare with those of the others however. This may cause a fall from grace for some teams.

Duking it out in groups

Six more teams will be starting their journey in the group stages. Alliance, Team Aster, Neon Esports, Natus Vincere, Quincy Crew and Thunder Predator. These are teams that just couldn’t make it to the top of their own region, and will have to prove themselves in a challenging group stage. Neon could be quite the dark horse team, having performed surprisingly well in their home region when nobody really expected anything from them. Now it is their turn to show the same skill on an international stage.

With the exception of Thunder Predator all of the other group stage teams are also expected to perform quite well at the major. Especially Aster who has shown to be able beat out big teams like LGD.PSG and Elephant to get here.

The Wild Card teams

The hardest road to victory will be there for the six Wild Card teams. Team Nigma, Team Liquid, Vici Gaming, PSG.LGD, T1 and AS Monaco Gambit are the teams that got into the major because of their performance in their strong home regions. With Regions like EU and China historically overperforming during international competitions they have been granted Wild Card spots. These big name teams should have the potential to get a high placing at the major.

However, if they couldn’t even reach the top two in their own region. Can you really expect them to step it up so much to win a major? Nigma, Liquid, Vici and PSG.LGD definitely have the raw talent to do so, but despite their stacked rosters, only two of these teams will get to proceed from the wild card stage of the tournament. This makes it so that this first part of the major, just might be the most exciting.

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Image credit: ONE Esports Singapore Major 2021

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