StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3

StarLadder i-League Invitational is the third tournament in Invitational StarLadder series. This time, the champion will take place not in the biggest city of the world Shanghai, China but in Kiev, Ukraine. As StarLadder organization is located here, it’s likely that it will be easier to them to organize the event here, but not in another country.

SL i-League Invitational #3 got a status of Minor tournament. The prize pool of the championship is $300,000 and 300 DPC Points that are necessary to get to The International 2018. There is no information about prize pool distribution, but there is information that the winner of the event will get 150 DPC Points, vice champion will be rewarded with 90 DPC, and the participants that will take 3-4 place will get 30 DPC Points.

In the previous season, the prize pool of SL i-League Invitational was lower than in 2017 and was only $100,000. The winners of the event were Team Liquid, the current champions of the world, that became one of two teams invited to SL Invitational. One more difference between SL Invitational #2 and SL Invitational #3 is that only two teams got the invites. Other participants were selected during qualifiers in 6 regions: Europe, CIS, SEA, China, North America and South America. Last year, there were 6 invited teams and two participants that got to the tournament after passing qualifiers in China and Europe.

LAN-final will take place on October 12-15. It will start with the group stage, where the participants will play GSL matches in bo3 format. After that, the best teams will get to play-off where they will play in Single Elimination bracket. The matches of semi-final will be played in bo3 format, and the grand final will be played in bo5.

Kiev CyberSport Arena will be the venue of the event. It opened in 2010, and became the cradle of esports in Ukraine.