posted by Jaywalker,
While there are many missing details such as the structure of the qualifiers, and the times of the matches the dates for the tournament have been released:
Western Qualifier:
May 13th - 19th, 2013Eastern Qualifier:
May 20th - 26th, 2013West Qualifier by The GD Studio & East Qualifier by BTS
We also now know that there will be a total of three slots available for qualifier teams, with both regions receiving one qualifier slot straight up, while the runners up of both regions will play for the third wildcard slot at the event, akin to how Mousesports and World Elite played for the final spot at the tournament last year, after MUFC had to back out due to complications during their travel to the event. This also means that there will be a total of 13 teams which will receive straight invites to the event.
A short recap - The Qualifier 2012
If you missed out on last year's qualifiers, here is a short recap on who won last year's qualifiers and how they did in the main event.
The International 2012 Western qualifiers were won by the now defunct team mTw in what can be considered to be one of the most impressive tournament run by any team. Led by Troels 'syndereN' Nielsen, the team dropped down to the loser's bracket after losing to Virtus.Pro in round one of the qualifier. Despite this setback, mTw did not give up hope and fought their way through the loser's bracket defeating teams such as Team Infused, Quantic Gaming, zNation and mousesports, all with a clear 2-0 match score to set up a grand final with Next.Kz whom they promptly defeated with a 3-1 match score for their trip to the Seattle. At the main event, mTw did not perform as well as they did in the qualifier, going 3-11 in the group stage and was then knocked out by Counter Logic Gaming in round one of the loser's bracket.
Meanwhile, the Eastern qualifier saw a very dominating performance from TongFu, did not drop a single match throughout the entire qualifier. Eventhough teams have come close to taking a game of TongFu on a few occasions, they always manage to pull through in the end to close the series in their favour. However their dominating streak did not continue into The International main event as they were put into the loser's bracket after going 6-8 in the group stages and ended their run at The International at the hands of countrymates DK. They came in at a respectable eighth place finish alongside Orange.eSports.
The teams that will be involved in the qualifier will obviously need to wait until the teams invited directly to The International 3 are announced. joinDOTA was told that this should be fully completed over the course of the next 2 or 3 weeks, so keep your eyes on joinDOTA for all your TI3 details.
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