The latest news about ESL One Katowice DOTA 2 in Poland
Poland is getting its first big DOTA 2 tournament since 2013 with ESL One Katowice.
Sixteen teams, eight of which were directly invited by ESL, will clash over six whole days of competition at ESL One Katowice—which will culminate at the main event in Spodek Arena on Feb. 24 and 25. ESL‘s unique “brackets from the start” tournament format, which was seen at ESL One Genting last month.
$1 million dollars in prize money and 1,500 Pro Circuit points will be up for grabs in Katowice, the latter of which are now all the more important considering that nearly half the current season is over.
ESL One Katowice‘s first day of group stage games concluded, with some of the teams expected to make the playoffs suddenly in danger of being eliminated.
Newbee, Evil Geniuses, Mineski, and even Team Liquid find themselves in the lower bracket, thanks in part to the best-of-one format of these early rounds. Should these teams fail to get past their matchups in the lower bracket, they will lose their shot at the title after just two days of competition.
Second day of group stage action at ESL One Katowice, all four teams navigated their way through the lower bracket without much trouble. With the exception of EG, each of the teams handled their respective opponents without losing a single game.
Yesterday, the action started with Evil Geniuses’ quick 2-0 victory over Newbee, with a total game time of less than 40 minutes. The American team displayed impeccable drafting and execution of their game plans, both of which involved dominating the laning phases and leveraging their early game advantage in order to push fast and hard.
The penultimate day of ESL One Katowice kicks off today, starting with Evil Geniuses vs. Virtus Pro. You can check out the event at ESL One live streaming site, or on their Facebook page.
