Tomorrow the first casualties of the main event will hit the floor $50,000 richer and a year's worth of aspirations lighter. Unlike prior TI's, every qualified team will play the big stage this year... but still only one can walk away the champion. Twenty players have won before, but twelve players this year are striving to be among the first repeat winners in history.
Name of player indicates their year of victory: Red is 2011, Blue is 2012, Green is 2013, Purple is 2014


Of those players who remain, only ee Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov, cn Zhang 'xiao8' Ning, and se Gustav 's4' Magnusson have claimed the fast-track of the upper-bracket, and they are on opposite ends. If both perform their best, it is possible for their teams to each conquer until the upper-bracket finals where they would finally face off.

Xiao8 and his contemporary teammates on LGD.cn will have to face recent MarsTV rivals Team Empire. With that recent 2-1 loss still ringing in their ears, LGD.cn will now have their upper-bracket position in the hands of a rematch. Will Xiao8 be one step closer to history by breaking from the losses of his recent past?

This Best of 3 has everything: top-tier teams, East vs West, recent finals tournament history, and the struggle to continue a legacy--and it happens to be the first series of the main event.

Do NOT miss this series!

The boys on Team Secret seem, for not at least, relatively safe. Secret has never dropped a game against EHOME (out of three) and they scored many more points in the group stages. This match will close out the first round of the main event on Tuesday as the perfect bookend to the struggles of former champions.

In between those matches, the rest face mortal danger for their tournament lives. Tomorrow at the height of the day a champion's blood will spill: either cn Chen 'Hao' Zhihao or ua Alexander 'XBOCT' Dashkevich, ua Ivan 'Artstyle' Antonov & ua Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin will be eliminated near the end of the day tomorrow.

Just before that match, cn Zhang 'Mu' Pan, cn Wang 'SanSheng' Zhaohui,cn Wang 'Banana' Jiao will face off against MVP Phoenix--a match never before seen on 6.84. These teams haven't seen each other in tournament since DAC, when MVP Phoenix beat NewBee quite handily with a 10,000 net worth lead by 12 minutes and only losing two tier 1 towers.

cn Luo 'Ferrari_430' Feichi, cn Zeng 'Faith' Hongda, and my Wong Hock 'Chuan' Chuan will face off against the MVP sister squad MVP Hot6, a matchup never before seen in tournament play. iG will walk into this match the odds-on favorites due to their recent pre-TI performance, and MVP Hot6 were the lowest-scoring team in the group stages.

But in a BO1, no team can take anything for granted.

Check in with joinDOTA regularly as we update you on the journeys of these returning contenders throughout the tournament.

[i]joinDOTA's TI5 coverage is brought to you by ASUS, our official partner for the event.
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