The International 2017

The International 2017 (TI7) was the seventh iteration of The International, an annual Dota 2esportsworld championship tournament. Hosted by Valve, the game's developer, the tournament began with the online qualifier phase in June 2017, and ended after the main event at the KeyArena in Seattle in August. The Grand Finals took place between the European-based Team Liquid and Chinese-based Newbee, with Liquid defeating Newbee 3–0 in a best-of-five series, winning nearly $11 million in prize money.

As with every International from 2013 onwards, the prize pool was crowdfunded by the Dota 2 community via its battle pass feature, with the total being one of the largest in esports history at nearly US$25 million. Other relevant events took place during the tournament, including a cosplay competition and submitted short film contest with their own independent prize pools. In addition, the first demonstration game of what later became the OpenAI Five, bots trained to defeat high-skill players of the game entirely through machine learning, was played live during the event.

Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed by Valve, which released in 2013. In it, two teams of five players compete by selecting pre-designed in-game hero characters, each with a variety of innate skills and deploy-able powers, and cooperating together to destroy the base of the other team before their own base is destroyed as to win the round. The game is played from a top-down perspective, and the player sees a segment of the game's map near their character as well as mini-map that shows their allies, with any enemies revealed outside the fog of war. The game's map has three symmetric "lanes" between each base, with a number of automated defense towers protecting each side. Periodically, the team's base will spawn an army of weak non-playable "creeps" that will march down one lane towards the opponents' base, fighting any enemy hero, creep, or structure they encounter. If a hero character is killed, that character will respawn back at their base after a delay period, which gets progressively longer the farther into the match.^[1][2]

As with previous years of the tournament, a corresponding battle pass for Dota 2 was released in May 2017, allowing the prize pool to be crowdfunded by players of the game.^[3][4][5] Known as the "Compendium", 25% of revenue made by it was sent directly towards the tournament's prize pool.^[5] At the time of event, Dota 2 featured 113 playable characters, called "heroes". Prior to each game in the tournament, a pre-game draft was held between the opposing team captains to select which heroes their teams will use, going back and forth until each side has selected and banned five heroes. Once a hero is picked, it cannot be selected by any other player that match, so teams use the draft to strategically plan ahead and deny the opponent's heroes that may be good counters or would be able to take advantage of weaknesses to their current lineup. The first pick in a match is decided by an in-game coin toss, and switches between each game in that match; the team that does not get first pick does get the option of which side of the map to defend.^[1]

El torneo comenzó inicialmente con las clasificatorias regionales en línea de la Comunidad de Estados Independientes (CEI), China, Europa, América del Norte, América del Sur y el Sudeste Asiático en junio de 2017. ^{[ 6 ]} Posteriormente, se jugaron dos grupos separados de todos contra todos al mejor de dos, cada uno compuesto por nueve equipos, del 2 al 5 de agosto, y el equipo peor clasificado de ambos fue eliminado de la competición. ^{[ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ]} Los 16 equipos restantes avanzaron al evento principal de doble eliminación en el KeyArena en Seattle del 7 al 12 de agosto, con los cuatro mejores equipos de cada grupo avanzando al cuadro superior, y los cuatro últimos avanzando al cuadro inferior. ^{[ 8 ] [ 7 ] [ 6 ]} La primera ronda del cuadro inferior se trató como eliminación simple , y el perdedor de cada partido fue eliminado inmediatamente del torneo. ^{[ 7 ] [ 9 ]} Todas las demás rondas de ambos grupos se jugaron en una serie al mejor de tres , con la excepción de la Gran Final, que se jugó entre los ganadores de los grupos superior e inferior en una serie al mejor de cinco . ^{[ 7 ] [ 9 ]}

Six teams were invited directly to the event, with an additional twelve qualifying teams participating.^[6][10] New to the event from previous years was the expansion from 16 to 18 total teams, as well as establishment of new qualifying regions; the Americas were split into separate North and South America regions, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region was split off from Europe.^[10][11]The International 2016 champion Wings Gaming disbanded earlier in 2017 with its members taking a break from professional Dota, marking the first time in the International's history that a defending champion or any player of its former roster did not defend their title.^[12] The rosters of two independent teams, Planet Dog and Team NP, were signed after the qualifier stage respectively by the esports organizations HellRaisers and Cloud9.^[13][14] Valve tournament rules allow for players to freely play for another organization without restrictions, as long as the rosters remain the same.^[15]

As with previous years of the event, Seattle KCPQ reporter Kaci Aitchison reprised her role as co-host and interviewer.^[7] However, Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner, the desk host of the last two Internationals, was not invited.^[7] Instead, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament host Alex "Machine" Richardson and StarCraft personality Sean "Day[9]" Plott replaced him.^[7]

La fase de grupos consistió en partidos de todos contra todos disputados antes del evento principal, que, según los resultados, ubicaban a los equipos en el cuadro superior o inferior. El equipo peor clasificado de cada grupo quedaba eliminado de la competición.

El evento principal contó con dos llaves en un formato de torneo de doble eliminación . En las llaves superiores, jugadas al mejor de tres , el equipo ganador avanzaba, mientras que el equipo perdedor era ubicado en las rondas respectivas de la llave inferior. El ganador de la llave superior pasaba a la Gran Final. La primera ronda en la llave inferior se jugaba al mejor de uno, y el perdedor era eliminado inmediatamente. Todos los demás partidos eran al mejor de tres, y el ganador de la llave inferior avanzaba a la Gran Final, que era una serie al mejor de cinco , para enfrentarse al ganador de la llave superior. ^{[ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ] [ 21 ] [ 22 ]}

La gran final se disputó entre Team Liquid , que avanzó desde el cuadro inferior, y Newbee, que avanzó desde el cuadro superior, con Liquid derrotando a Newbee 3-0 en una serie al mejor de cinco. ^{[ 22 ]} Tras perder los dos primeros juegos de forma similar, Newbee intentó ajustar su estrategia de selección de héroes al comienzo del tercer juego, que decidía la serie, en un intento desesperado por salvarla. ^{[ 22 ]} Sin embargo, fue en vano, ya que Liquid tuvo éxito al principio del juego y avanzó rápidamente hacia la base de Newbee, abrumándolos y ganando la serie y, por lo tanto, el torneo, convirtiendo a Team Liquid en el primer equipo en dejar sin puntos al equipo contrario en una gran final de The International. ^{[ 23 ]}

(Nota: Los premios están en USD) ^{[ 24 ]}

Until being surpassed by The International 2018, the event held the esports tournament record for the largest prize pool, which finalized at US$24,787,916.^[25][26] A four-part episodic documentary television series produced by TBS regarding the event aired throughout August 2017. Known as Eleague: Road To The International Dota 2 Championships, the documentary followed compLexity Gaming's attempt to qualify for the tournament.^[27][28] Other events took place during the tournament, including an all-star match, featuring players voted in by battle pass owners,^[29] a fan cosplay competition, and a Dota 2 themed short film contest, with all of them having their own independent prize pools.^[30] Also during the event, Valve revealed a teaser trailer for Artifact, a Valve-developed digital collectible card game based on Dota 2,^[31] as well as two new playable characters for the game itself.^[32] A live 1v1 demonstration was also played during the event between professional Dota 2 player Dendi and an OpenAI-curated machine learnedbot, to which Dendi lost.^[33][34] The grand finals of the tournament between Team Liquid and Newbee were featured in an episode of Valve's Dota documentary series, True Sight.^[35]

The matches were broadcast through the game's built-in spectating client, as well as through the live streaming platform Twitch. Valve reported that concurrent viewership numbers exceeded five million during the event, surpassing numbers set at previous Internationals.^[36] During the Grand Finals, more than 400,000 people were watching the series via Twitch, with the KeyArena also being filled to its 15,000+ capacity.^[37]

• Sitio web oficial