What You Need To Know For The International 2016

By eggs on Aug 2, 2016 00:31 UTC

The main event is only a week away, but the start of matches will begin tomorrow, August 2nd at 9am PDT, kicking off the wild card matches, then the group stage for The International 2016. Valve today released the long-anticipated schedule for the upcoming events. With a current prize pool of $19,314,506 and rising, Valve has broken its own record, from last year’s TI, for the largest prize pool in eSports.

The Format

The event is divided into three parts: the wildcard stage, the group stage, and the main event. This tracks closely to last year’s TI, except two wildcard teams, instead of one, will advance to the group stage. During the group stage, sixteen teams are divided into two groups, for a best-of-two round robin. The top four teams and bottom four teams will each, respectively, advance to the Upper Bracket and the Lower Bracket of the main event.

Dota 2 fans may notice that this year’s rules for the group stage are slightly different. Teams will now receive one point per win, as opposed to last year’s TI, where they were awarded 3 points for a 2-0 series win over an opponent. Mathematically this change would not have changed the upper and lower bracket cutoffs from previous events, but it does resolve certain issues, such as a team winning 2-0 then losing 2-0 receiving more points than a team that split 1-1 in the same matches.

There is still incentive for teams to win as many games as they can, even if there is concern about the cost of exposing tactics and draft strategies. The 1st seed of each group will have their pick of facing off against either the 3rd or 4th seed of the other group.

How To Watch

All games will be available on several live streaming platforms, through Twitch, Steam Broadcasting, Youtube, WatchESPN, and DotaTV. This will be the first option for people who can not attend the event at Key Arena. If you are in the area, but do not have a ticket, Valve has announced the availability of an outdoor viewing area and limited daily tickets outside the arena. The tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis, starting at 7:00am Monday and 8:00am Tuesday-Thursday. No daily tickets are available for Friday and Saturday. Outside the immediate area, there will also be organized pubstomps for live viewings.

Replays are also available on the website or via the in-game client. It’s a great way to catch up on the midweek games, and obviously the group stage games, which, without the aid of multiple screens, would be nearly impossible to watch with all the overlapping matches.

What To Read

To help the community get a larger understanding of what’s at stake and the teams who will be competing at TI6, we’ve written a series of posts over the past month. We’ve covered all the TI6 teams, from the invited teams and their position as powerhouses in Dota’s competitive scene, the depressing state of China and SEA’s Dota teams and their chances at this year’s TI, the wildcard teams and their potential of a CDEC-level upset, and finally, the potential hometown favorites, the NA and EU teams.

The present doesn’t exist without the context of the past, and you can catch up on that with kawaiisock’s brief history of previous Valve events, where he covers every previous TI champion and what it means in Dota’s history. We’ve come a long way since the $1.6 million prize pool of the first TI.

For some context on the current meta, we’ve written on the patch entering TI6, with an analysis on patch 6.88b and a highlight on a rising hero, Shadow Demon.

There will be hundreds of hours of Dota played over the course of the next two weeks. For the latest live stat tracking and final match scores, we’ll have all of that covered on our esports page and our new series page, which makes it easier to look at current and upcoming matches. Finally, Dotabuff staff will be at the event and providing live coverage of the event on our blog and homepage.