The International is almost upon us and once again the best of the best in Dota 2 will compete for the Aegis of Champions. The tournament is adored by millions of fans and Valve is looking to make the event more accessible than before.
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The International 2023 Preview
Schedule
The event will start with the Group Stage which will be held on October 12-15. The Playoffs on October 20-22 and The Finals will be on October 27-29. The location will go back to Seattle, the coveted home of The International.
Format
There are changes made to the format for this year’s event. Valve has broken up the tournament into two stages. The first one is both the Group Stage and Playoffs called “The Road To The International”, 20 teams will battle it out until only 8 teams remain. The final stage is called The International, which is a double-elimination bracket with placements based on the previous stages.
Group Stage
The group stage is now completely different. Gone are the days where the teams were divided into 2 groups of 10 and they usually played 5 games per day in a span of 4 days. Now we will have 4 groups of 5 that will play for 2 days. The bottom team in each group will be eliminated. This means that every game will have more impact on the standings of each team. No information on whether it’s best-of-two or best-of-three yet.
After this stage, the remaining 16 teams will be pitted against one another to determine who will be in the Upper Bracket and Lower Bracket of the Playoffs.
Playoffs
The Playoffs will be held at the Seattle Convention Center’s Summit in front of a live audience on October 20. The top 8 teams from the Group Stage will compete for an upper bracket spot in The International on the first day. On Saturday, the lower bracket teams will be playing in elimination matches. The winners are facing the losers from the upper bracket for the last 4 remaining spots on Sunday. All matches will be best-of-three.
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The International
The remaining 8 teams will now compete in a double-elimination bracket. The placements are based on the Playoffs standings. All matches will still be best-of-three except for the Grand Finals which will be a best-of-five. The venue will be on the Climate Pledge Arena and it will be held on October 27 up to October 29.
The changes aim to make the games much more entertaining for the viewers and put more importance to each game played by the teams.
The tickets for the Playoffs Stage and The International will be on sale around the second half of August according to Valve.
