DTS-Cup 2009

The country is right now immersed in the IPL T20 action but I was excited about a completely different tournament. For the past two days, I was busy following the action in the DTS-Cup 2009 that took place in Ukraine. It was an e-sports tournament that included just two games, Counter-strike and DotA. But these two games are enough to get most of the gamers excited. From DotA players’ perspective, we’ve been waiting for a LAN event for a long time now because LAN events reveal the true potential of a team which gets bogged down by latency issues in online events.

The event was streamed live in GarenaTV and Gamestah, so, I was able to follow all the matches as they happened. Their site too had a live feed but was rather rubbish as they probably didn’t have enough bandwidth in their servers to support the huge number of audience. Anyway, getting back to the event itself, a total of 16 DotA teams participated in the event with the top seeded teams being Ks.Int, Ravens, DTS and Next!Please.

The event got really exciting when Ks.Int and Ravens started losing in the Group Stage. Both the teams didn’t have one key player each because of various issues. Next!Please and Ks.Int got knocked out of the tournament very early. Even Ravens seemed to be struggling and DTS too entered the losers bracket in Round 1. Two relatively unknown teams 1dota and Os|One seemed to be the only ones who were yet to lose a match. Os|One defeated 1dota in the winners bracket finals.

Before I pull the cat out of the bag and reveal the winner, let me explain why this event is unique. This event has introduced a new style of game-play for the DotA community. We are all used to the combos and synergic spells being casted within a gap of few milliseconds in a confined area of battle and in 30 seconds we’ll know the end result. But most of the matches in this event were characterized by a chaotic play style where the fight starts with just a couple of heroes while others wait for the right moment to engage. Watch this fight for example where Ravens (Sentinel) push the base tower with just four heroes and Enigma enters when the battle is almost over.

If that wasn’t enough, some fights became completely chaotic and the battlefield gets stretched to twice the size where three separate battles take place at the same time. The fight below is split into two battles, one with Morph, Abaddon, Lion & Fiend, the other with Mirana, Tauren, Crixalis and Bane. Puck and Kunkka pass through the first battle to reach the second one. I couldn’t even see all the heroes together in one screen.

Finally, some sanity was restored in the event when Ravens gave a solid comeback beating 1dota in the losers bracket finals to get a shot at the undefeated Os|One. Ravens managed to beat Os|One in the finals but this being a double elimination tournament, had to play them again to eliminate them. But Os|One defeated Ravens with a late game pwnage by Tinker and stole the cup along with the $3,000 cash reward.