The International 12 (TI12) and its group stage games are about to start. This time, the preliminaries will sport a slightly different format compared to some of the more recent iterations of the tournament, with four groups of five teams each. Every group will determine which squads make it to the playoff bracket.
via Valve
via Valve
Here is the list of each group and the teams therein:
Group A
- 9Pandas (Eastern Europe)
- Entity (Western Europe)
- Evil Geniuses (South America)
- Team SMG (Southeast Asia)
- Team Spirit (Eastern Europe)
Group B
- Azure Ray (China)
- BetBoom Team (Eastern Europe)
- Shopify Rebellion (North America)
- Team Liquid (Western Europe)
- Thunder Awaken (South America)
Group C
- beastcoast (South America)
- Gaimin Gladiators (Western Europe)
- LGD Gaming (China)
- nouns (North America)
- Virtus.pro (Eastern Europe)
Group D
- Keyd Stars (South America)
- PSG Quest (Western Europe)
- Talon Esports (Southeast Asia)
- TSM (North America)
- Tundra Esports (Western Europe)
Right off the bat, we can see that Groups B and C have some real killers on deck. Team Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators, two of the most dominant squads throughout the entire Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) season, play in these two groups respectively.
Rounding out Group B is Shopify Rebellion, composed of everyone’s favorite ex-Evil Geniuses players like Artour “Arteezy” Babaev and Tal “Fly” Aizik. Group C meanwhile also has the legendary LGD Gaming, who will seek to redeem China as a whole for their rather lackluster overall performance this year.
But let’s not forget about Team Spirit, either. Though they were bounced out rather early in last year’s tournament, this year they have hit their stride at just the right time — winning the Riyadh Masters in July and DreamLeague Season 21 just three weeks ago. They’re looking poised to make it far in Seattle this time around, and possibly even bag a second Aegis of Champions.
Group Stage Mechanics
As mentioned previously, each group contains five teams each. The group stage itself is divided into two phases, henceforth referred to as Phase One and Phase Two. The teams in question will play each other in a best-of-two round-robin format, which will determine placements based on overall map score.
The top two squads in each group after Phase One will then go up against the third or fourth place teams from the opposite group (i.e. first place from Group A faces fourth place from Group B) in Phase Two. However, each group’s bottom team will be eliminated from the tournament at this point.
Phase Two then begins with the remaining 16 teams playing each other in eight head to head best-of-three matches, in order to determine seeding in the main event bracket. Eight teams will earn upper bracket slots this way, while the remaining eight will start from the lower bracket. No teams will be in danger of elimination at this time.
