From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

At the Wudu Longzhimeng Hotel, the five members of the Zhenhunshi team sat quietly in their competition room, waiting for the start of the first match of the group stage.

After about a month of intensive training in Europe, their strength has reached a new level. This Xue Ruyi Super Dimension World Invitational Tournament is a touchstone for them to test the results of their training, and it is also their first time facing a foreign team in a professional competition.

Gu Ran's MMR has been steadily rising during this period, reaching over 16000 points, and ranking in the top 100 on the European server, which is currently the strongest server.

He has become increasingly proficient in using "overclocking". He can now enter and exit overclocking at any time. He can enter overclocking for up to ten minutes in each game. In BO3 or BO5 games, as long as the continuous overclocking time does not exceed two minutes, he can enter overclocking for an average of five minutes per hour.

The current "overclocking" can be understood as a skill with a one-hour cooldown and a duration of five minutes. However, this skill can only be used for up to two minutes at a time. If it exceeds two minutes, the cooldown for the next use will be greatly increased.

The Xue Ruyi competition is divided into four groups. Each group has four teams playing two BO2 matches each day. The first two BO2 matches for Group A will start at 3 pm, followed by Group B at 5:30 pm, Group C at 8 pm, and Group D at 10:30 pm. The group stage will last for three days. The two BO2 matches for each group will start simultaneously each day, so there will be two stages. The audience can choose which match to watch.

There are official commentators, and the three major live streaming platforms have also purchased the rights, so various DOTA2 streamers can commentate on the match themselves.

Among the four Chinese teams, Team Zhenhunshi has garnered the most attention because they were the top seed in this year's TI qualifiers, attracting many fans. They also participated in the Immortal Cup, and many viewers who no longer watch professional matches chose to come and watch them when they heard that they were going to participate in the Snowball Tournament. Some enthusiastic fans have already booked tickets for the offline tournament and are ready to support them on-site.

At the home of Lin Yiming, the number one fan of Firefly, the mid-laner of the Soul Stone team, the lights were already off, and potato chips, Pokey, ice-cold beer, and chilled soda were prepared. Three brothers were sitting side by side on the large sofa: Lin Yiming, his old gaming teammates Awei and Binbin.

"Yiming, is this competition really that exciting?"

Wearing a red T-shirt, Ah Wei casually asked while drinking an ice-cold beer. The three brothers used to be teammates who played games together to rank up, but recently Lin Yiming has become obsessed with watching esports, and they haven't been playing games with him as often. Today, on a rare holiday, they originally came to play games with Lin Yiming to rank up, but they were dragged here to watch an esports match instead.

"It's definitely more exciting than the game! The alchemy-farming-A strategy that the three of us used last time was one I learned from the competition. Didn't we make a big splash with that strategy? Today, let's watch the competition first. Maybe some pro players will come up with some new strategies that we can use when we play together later."

Lin Yiming has added a few more viewing screens to his home. These are new purchases he made so he can watch several streamers' live streams at the same time. He's now used to listening to streamers like SDN's analysis when watching the draft phase, and then listening to Charles and Chao Ge's banter when the game starts. Occasionally, he'll go to the OB channel to listen to Da Guo Fan's commentary. He can simply turn on the sound of the screen he wants to listen to and turn off the others.

"Is this your favorite team, Soulstone, playing against Na'Vi? Na'Vi sounds familiar; I think I heard that name in a tournament a long time ago."

Unlike Awei, who never watches matches, Binbin used to watch DOTA2 matches for a while.

"Navi is the TI1 champion, and they can be considered a living fossil club since TI1. However, their current strength is not strong, and they didn't even make it to this year's TI. We should say they have a good chance."

Lin Yiming has already seen the schedule for the Soul Stone tournament: first Navi, then OG, and finally VP. He will play a relatively weak team first, followed by a relatively strong one. However, the actual gap between these three teams may not be that big. On-the-spot performance and whether they have any new ideas recently should be the more crucial factors.

As we were chatting, the live broadcast of the match officially began. The main stage for this match featured a host and two commentators. In the first match of Group A, Zhenhunshi team faced off against Navi team. The host was AMS, and the commentators were DY and Zeng Jiaoyang.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Super Dimension World Snow Ruyi competition. Today is the first day of the group stage. I'm your host, AMS.

Under the spotlight, AMS turned slightly to the side, her legs, which were especially favored by the camera, crossed in front of the commentary table with an almost precise elegance. The fullest curve of her calf perfectly matched the bend of her knee on the other side, her ankle gently hooked, her toes touching the ground, like a crane with its wings folded, waiting for the next moment to spread its wings.

Hi everyone, I'm DY/Ori.

Sitting next to him was Zeng Jiaoyang (Ori). Today he was wearing a beige sweatshirt with a line of tiny English letters printed on the front, dark gray casual pants, and white sneakers. He didn't have the formality of DY's shirt; he looked more like a college student who had just come out of the library—in fact, Jiao-ge had recently participated in a college DOTA2 league, and reportedly got badly beaten.

Our competition this time is divided into group stage and knockout stage. The group stage is divided into four groups, and the group plays a BO2 single round-robin within the group. The first place in the group directly advances to the knockout stage, and the second place in the group plays a round of elimination matches with the third place in another group. The winner advances to the knockout stage.

The knockout stage will be a single-elimination tournament with eight teams. Those who frequently watch Dota 2 matches may know that it's usually a double-elimination format, but this time it's single-elimination. So, what differences do you two commentators see between the single-elimination format and the more common double-elimination format?

After introducing the competition format, host AMS posed a more technical question to the two retired professional players.

Single-elimination tournaments may not provide a learning curve for slow-starting teams, but rather highlight their pre-tournament preparation. Double-elimination tournaments, on the other hand, offer a learning opportunity for relatively slow-starting teams. Throughout the history of TI, we have seen teams rise stronger in the lower bracket and ultimately win the championship, such as Team Liquid at TI7.

DY adjusted his glasses, his tone calm and composed.

I remember that TI7 wasn't the only TI to make it up from the lower bracket, right? Why don't you mention others?

Zeng Jiaoyang deliberately set a trap for DY, and the banter between the two was part of the entertaining content the organizers wanted to present to the audience.

DY looked speechless, rolled his eyes at his old teammate Ori, and finally offered an explanation:

[The reason I'm not going to talk about it is obvious to those who know. People probably don't like hearing the stories of how we fought our way up from the loser's bracket, so I won't go into them.]

The host, AMS, smiled and changed the subject.

[Thank you to both commentators for their analysis. Our first group stage match is about to begin. We will now proceed to the draft phase.]