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You really should be watching The International 10, even if the crowd is fake

Three years or 781 days ago, OG etched itself into the history books by becoming the first two time champion of Dota 2’s The International tournament.

The tournament took a backseat in 2020 due to the pandemic but it’s back again in 2021 and we are hooked on the action.

The International 10 started last week with the group stage which ran from 7th to 10th October and this week the playoffs began on Tuesday in the familiar double elimination format.

This year the tournament is being held in Bucharest, Romania and while there were plans to have a crowd attend the event, escalating COVID-19 rates in Romania meant that these plans were scuppered.

As a way bring a bit of real world flare to the viewing experience, Valve added a Spectator Cheer function in-game and to Twitch. By clicking on a team’s name you can add to the virtual roar of the crowd. While the community seems to hate this according to PC Gamer, we quite like it and it helps add to the excitement of the games.

Of course, the bit of The International that always grabs headlines is the prize pool which amounts to over $40 million this year.

Each team that participates in the tournament is guaranteed to win at least $100 000 but the overall winners of the tournament will walk away with a cool $18 208 300 and of course the Aegis of Champions.

The teams are a mix of stalwarts in the pro-Dota scene and newcomers who are stepping onto the main stage at The International for the first time.

The teams which are still in the running as of time of writing are:

Upper bracket

  • Invictus Gaming (IG)
  • Team Secret
  • Paris Saint Germain LGD (PSG.LGD)
  • Virtus Pro (VP)

Lower bracket

  • Team Spirit (TS)
  • OG
  • T1
  • Vici Gaming (VG)
  • Evil Geniuses (EG)

Today two more teams from the upper bracket will fall to the lower bracket and they will have one last chance to fight for the title and, if they lose, they head home with a cash prize, which is more than what losing teams received in the past.

The grand finals are set to take place on Sunday 17th October. At 9:00AM the lower bracket final will be played and the winner there will head to the grand final which is scheduled to take place at 12:00PM.

If you’d like to catch up on the matches, check out interviews and skits/features used between matches you can head to the Dota 2 YouTube page here.

We also recommend watching the True Sight feature from The International 2019 featuring Team Liquid and OG.

As for where to watch, as mentioned you can tune in on Twitch if you want to participate in the crowd cheering but here in South Africa we recommend watching over on YouTube as the quality is better and we experienced fewer issues on our slower internet connection.

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