How To Watch TI8

By eggs on Aug 14, 2018 01:10 UTC

With the groups announced for TI8, the stage is set for Dota’s largest tournament of the year, with a prize pool tracking towards $25 million. Here’s what you need to know to keep track of the tournament over its 10 day span.

Who Are The Teams?

Leading up to TI8, we’ve covered every competing team, from the teams that might surpise us to the favorites. We’ve also written a predictions post based on the esports betting odds at Buff88.

The Group Stages

From August 15th-18th, eighteen teams will compete for the Main Event bracket seeding. Not only will two teams be eliminated in this stage, the seeding has large implications on how difficult the paths will be for teams. A team in the lower bracket will have to play up to twice as many matches to fight to the grand finals.

Similar to last year, the teams will be split into two groups, where each team will play every other team in their group in a best of 2. The top 4 teams of each group advance to the upper bracket, while the bottom 4 move to the lower bracket. The bottom teams are eliminated.

The Main Event

There will be a one day break before the main event, which begins August 20th and ends on Saturday, August 25. Sixteen teams will compete in a double elimination bracket. With the exception of the Grand Finals (best of five) and the first Lower Bracket round (best of one), all other games will be a best of three format.

How To Watch

Valve has put up a media page that’ll update with the stream and behind the scene content from their Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram. The tournament, per usual, will also be available to watch on Twitch and via the in-game client.

We’ll also be covering the event here on the blog, writing recaps, highlighting the biggest moments of the day, and giving our first impressions on how the meta is shaping as the tournament progresses. Follow us on Twitter and be sure to check in on our esports hub hub for up-to-date scores.