posted by Sun_Tzu,
Quantic Gaming and 
RattleSnakes followed by the Solo Championship playoffs starting at 04:00 CEST(19:00 PDT) roughly.
The wildcard match will be an interesting clash of two creative teams and may provide the most tailored strategies specifically prepared for these matches of the whole tournament, with each team likely to have a very clear idea of what they want to draft as first pick or second pick, Radiant or Dire, and with a different strategy ready for each game of the series.
While the community voting which was attached to the team profile shows a near 80% expectation of Quantic to take this and the bets on our site further back this up with 75% putting their Cheese on the Western Qualifier runner up, it is likely that the first pick advantage will mean a lot during this series as it enables a lot mure surprising pocket strategies which can truly give you the edge, as you are able to not just open the draft but also be the one to react during the second half of the draft.
The first pick is decided through two coinflips, one initial which sets the alternating order for the first four games of the series, and a secondary before the fifth game, which determines who gets to choose between going first and picking sides for the final game of the series, assuming it comes to that.
Also since there is a limited amount of slots for this game and a total of four streams per major language for the groupstages, only two per language will be given a spot inside the game, with our very own
Toby 'TobiWan' Dawson and 
Niklas 'Wagamama' Högström prodiving you with the first of the English stream through joinDOTA RED while 
David 'LD' Gorman and David 'Luminous' Zhang providing the second stream through BeyondTheSummit. There is only one Russian caster assigned at this time, this being 
Vitalii 'v1lat' Volochai for StarLadder.There will also be two Chinese casting pairs inside the game,
Zou '820' Yitian and Lingxiang 'Haitao' Zhou as well as Wei Hua 'LaoDang' Dang and Dong 'DC' Can. The sixth slot has not been assigned, be it for another Russian stream of for another as yet unrepresented language stream. All other streamers are free to stream the games as per Valve's instructions but will have to cast off of DotaTV rather than inside the game. The games will be free to watch inside the game.Solo Championship Playoffs
We still do not know the brackets ofthe upcoming Solo Championships or the casters for these games, however the rules have been released, stating that it will be best-of-three single elimination following what has become a fairly standard ruleset of no jungling and no Soul Ring. Unlike most solo mid tournaments however runes will be allowed as well as Bottle Crowing, meaning that an emphasis will be put on upgrading the Courier as soon as possible. Both players start with a basic courier.
Each round is won by the first player to two kills or to push down two towers. A coinflip decides the side, which alternates for the rest of the series. Each round will be a mirror match-up, with the two first rounds decided through blind picks by the players where if the picks all differ both players first picks will be played in rounds 1 and 2. In cases of one same pick, this pick is discarded and the other two dissimilar picks will be played for both players. The third round is always Shadow Fiend vs. Shadow Fiend, which is also the reason this hero is not available to be picked in the first two rounds.
Solo Championships are generally heavily influenced by the players mechanical skills, which puts Mushi in a good position for this task, although his decision making may betray him in the long run. In this sence s4 is likely a strong contender, as his decision making is mostly impeccable. Similarly xiao8 is likely to be very strong, offering up a mix of great mechanics and decision making.
Likely the aggression will be brought to the table by iceiceice, Mu and Dendi, as all of these highly skilled players are likely to go for kills early rather than waiting around and accruing advantages. Of these Dendi is the obvious favourite, perhaps even the overall favourite to take the win as the combines strong current form with generally being one of the best laners in the world.
The dark horses are Ferrari_430 and FATA-, for very different reasons. Normally Ferrari should be a favourite to win he whole thing, but his recent performances have been slightly off. By the end of his first match we are likely to know a lot more about his current form, as well as gain some insight into how well iG's final weeks of practice have progressed. On the other hand FATA- is a highly skilled solo mid and is on form, but his play has not been tested properly on this level, whereas the other young Westerner s4 already proved himself against the best of Asia on LAN at the G-1 Champions League Season 5.
Anyone who wants to follow the event via liveticker can now download Razer Comms and join the Team Razer group. Just go to www.razerzone.com/comms to download and install this brilliant VoIP tool and enter the following code "UXDUPzXXYuiQbm7O" in the search. It will result in finding the group "Team Razer". Join it and follow the updates we post in there during The International 2013!
Comments