DOTA Summit 8 Preview: Schedule, Format, Teams

The last minor tournament of the year DOTA Summit 8 starts today! Let’s take a look at the tournament’s schedule, format and list of participating teams.

DOTA Summit 8 will be held on December 13-17 in Los Angeles and is organized by Beyond the Summit studio. The tournament’s line-up consists of nine teams, two of them were directly invited by the organizers, while the other teams had to make it through the regional qualifiers, including King’s Cup: America local tournament. Thus, the list of participating teams looks as follows:

Participants:

Qualified Teams:

• North America – compLexity Gaming
• South America – Sacred
• Europe – Team Kinguin
• CIS – Virtus.pro
• Southeast Asia – Fnatic
• China – LGD Gaming
• King’s Cup: OpTic Gaming

Invited Team:

• OG
• Evil Geniuses

The teams were seeded into three round-robin groups: the teams will play with teach other thrice, with each victory granting one point. Then, the teams placed first in their groups will advance to the playoffs. The teams placed second will qualify for Wild Card, where they will be joined by a team with the highest amount of points across the third-placed teams. The winner of Wild Card will advance to the single-elimination playoff bracket with best-of-three regular series and best-of-five finals. The teams were seeded into groups as follows:

Groups:

Group A	Group B	Group C
Virtus.pro	Evil Geniuses	LGD Gaming
Sacred	Team Kingun	OpTic Gaming
OG	compLexity Gaming	Fnatic

Schedule (UK Time):

December 13-14, Group Stage

• 17:00 – Kinguin vs coL
• 20:45 – VP vs Sacred
• 00:30 – EG vs Kinguin

December 14-15, Group Stage

• 17:00 – LGD vs OpTic
• 20:45 – EG vs coL
• 00:30 – OpTic vs Fnatic

December 15-16, Group Stage

• 17:00 – OG vs Sacred
• 20:45 – LGD vs Fnatic
• 00:30 – VP vs OG

December 16-17, Wild Card

• 19:30 – Semifinals #1
• 23:15 – Semifinals #2
• 03:00 – Finals

December 17-18, Playoffs

• 17:00 – Semifinals #1
• 20:45 – Semifinals #2
• 00:30 – Grand Finals

DOTA Summit 8 is a minor tournament with $300,000 and 300 Qualifier Points at stake. The tournament is well-known for more casual approach to broadcasting – the games are often (co)casted by the pro players, also there is usually a lot of entertaining content such as funny videos and contests.