The International 2013
Start date | |
Finish date | |
Prize Pool | $2,874,380 USD |
Tickets | Not available |
Region | North America |
Location | Seattle, USA |
Organizers | |
Series |
Over the last decade, Dota 2 tournaments were very successful for both esportsmen and a huge army of fans of this discipline. Consequently, it resulted in an enormous interest and the final championship where the all best teams from the whole planet aspired to get to.
Perhaps, among all similar championships, The International 2013 made most of all to attract new audience due to intense fighting among participants and toughness of all battles.
Hospitable America
The country where the final Dota 2 championship was held became the USA. The place where where the teams participating in the tournament was Seattle for the second time. All the gaming battles of the competition of the year took place in the concert hall Benaroya Hall with seating capacity 3 000 viewers.
The hall was always full during the tournament. As it was projected for hosting symphony orchestras, there was perfect acoustics. During the whole tournament, there was unusual atmosphere and its only flaw was relatively little capacity. In fact, the number of those who wanted to attend the battles exceeded the number of the lucky ones who managed to make it to the competition.
The championship started on the night of 2 August 2013 and lasted till 12 August of the same month.
Prize pool
The initial prize pool of the tournament announced by the organizing company Valve accounted for $1 600 000. But before the start of the championship, its sum increased thanks to selling a virtual issue The Interactive Compendium dedicated to the upcoming The International at the in-game store.
Gamers and fans that bought the book got a chance to take part in various votings and contests and also became owners of all sorts of prizes.
The company Valve claimed that a quarter of selling the book would top up the prize pool of the championship. The cost of the purchase was $9.99, so if the level of sales was on the good level, the sum of the grabs had to increase a lot. This was what happened.
On the next day after the start of sales, the prize pool got $100 000 bigger. As a result, by 22 July the sum of the prize had increased to $1 274 407 which led it to the growth to $2 874 407.
Many people remembered that tournament with the significant growth of the prize pool which affected all the esports industry.
Teams participating in the championship and its format
The format of the tournament was not really surprising. Sixteen teams took part in to and thirteen of them got personal invitations. Two of other three trips were gained by teams after the online qualifiers held in May 2013. These were Mousesports (European qualifier) and LGD Gaming (Asian elimination round).
The only invite was played for in Seattle on 2 August between teams that took second places in their qualifiers. The lucky team that won the last tisket to the invitation was the Chinese team Rattlesnake that beat DD.Dota from the EU.
The teams that got to the final tournament are: Natus Vincere, Virtus.pro (CIS), Fnatic, The Alliance, LGD.international (EU), Team Liquid, Orange Neolution, Team Dignitas, Invasion MUFC (North America), Invictus Gaming, Team Zenith, DK, TongFu (Asia).
The contestants got divided into two groups with eight teams in each where they had matches in the Round Robin system. Four best teams from each group made it to the upper bracket of the playoff. Losers made up the lower bracket and had a fight for a chance to get to the final. Even if that chance was little and longer, it gave a hope to win the whole tournament.
Fighting in groups and playoff
In Group А, the best result was showed by NaVi that lost only one loss and one draw with the Chinese team LGD Gaming out of seven battles. The Ukrainians’ achievement in the group round was not treated as something remarkable as “Born to Win” had always been considered favourites since the beginning of the previous decade. And this is not surprising as the Ukrainian team won the first annual tournament and became the silver finalist at the next The International.
in Group B, the phenomenal result was shown by the Swedish team, Alliance, that managed to win all their battles with their opponents. After several matches, they stopped being considered a dark horse and gradually migrated to the list of favourites according to sportsbook experts and the majority of analysts.
At the playoff stage, the Swedish beat all opponents with consummate ease and made it to the grand final. At the semifinal, they beat NaVi 2:0 even though this opponent did not stop fighting for the champion title, but continued it. The Ukrainians had a very difficult battle with the American gamers from Orange Neolution gained a hard victory and passed to their third final in a row.
The playoff in 2013 is still treated as one of the most beautiful and fascinating. Many battles still hold a top position in the treasury of the best Dota 2 games. Even today true fans number the following battles among masterpieces:
- NaVi against TongFu;
- Alliance against DK;
- Alliance against Team Liquid.
Grandiose outcome of the tournament
The final match between the Swedish and the Ukrainian teams is still acknowledged as the best in the Dota 2 history. This fascinating battle still takes breath away even when we watch it now.
If the first meeting of the opponents ended up with Alliance’s flawless victory, the second one showed a beautiful epic battle for everybody. The score speaks for itself - 3:2 for the Swedish team.
Such memorable meetings have been disappearing lately. Teams fight carefully as the value of each minor mistake is too high and it may lead the teams to losses.
The victory brought almost half a million dollars to the Swedish team while the Ukrainians got a cheque for slightly more than six hundred thousand. The second failure for NaVi at the final in a row affected the emotional state of the Ukrainian team negatively. In fact, not any team could live through such a painful blow. So, further unsatisfactory results of the team at the following International tournaments do not look unexpected. “Born to Win” did not achieve anything significant at the final tournaments.