After two weeks of hiatus, StarLadder returns with the season 8 playoffs, starting this Friday and concluding on Sunday. Alliance, Natus Vincere, Sigma International and Fnatic will compete in Kiev for the total prize pool of $132,000 which is a significant increase since last season.
StarLadder is mentioned in our article about Money Week and how prize pools have progressed, read it here.
The last StarLadder game of the regular season was played January 5th and after a hiatus it is now time for the offline playoffs, as per usual it is taking place at Cyberarena in Kiev, Ukraine. Cyberarena has been a core part of the CIS as well as European Dota 2 scene ever since 2011, when the beta version opened up the windows on the first pixels for the public to gaze upon. In the year 2013, four seasons of StarLadder were started and three of them concluded. This will be the fourth one coming to an end. The prior three seasons have all had the Swedish team Alliance in the finals, facing different teams every time, and they successfully walked away with the championship two of the times (season 5 versus Fnatic and season 6 versus iCCup) and one time as runner-up (season 7 versus Natus Vincere). If they were to reach yet another grand final of StarLadder, they could face a fourth opponent provided Sigma International would join them there. However, given the recent shape of Alliance there is a substantial possibility that they will not reach the final at all. That is a possibility and not a guarantee though. After all, they did finish first place in the regular online season.
Natus Vincere, reigning champions, is a team always being a force to count on at offline events and many will be picking them as winners for this one as well if asked to predict a champion. Fnatic who surprised at the Dota 2 League playoffs (however with two stand-ins, hard to say if that was to their advantage or not), are probably hungry for a chance to properly prove themselves, using their full squad. Sigma International just won the PinnacleSports Pro-Am tournament and have overall been performing well ever since MLG Columbus, making the coming StarLadder playoffs a particularly interesting one.
Worth mentioning is the almost ridiculous boost in prize pool since last season, it has been increased from $22,500 to an incredible $132,000. $50,000 out of those comes from the tournament's sponsors and the rest from the community members who have helped adding to the prize by purchasing the in-game bundle. For every ticket sold, two and a half dollars went straight to the prize pool. In terms of schedule, the playoffs will last three days instead of the usual four.
Friday 17th, 15.00 CET - 
Alliance vs Fnatic 
, best of three
Friday 17th, 19.00 CET - 
Natus Vincere vs Sigma International , best of three
Saturday 18th, 15.00 CET - Lower Bracket round 1, best of three
Saturday 18th, 19.00 CET - Upper Bracket final, best of three
Sunday 19th, 13.30 CET - Lower Bracket final, best of three
Sunday 19th, 18.00 CET - Grand Final, best of five
On site to provide the English stream will be David 'LD' Gorman and Ben 'Merlini' Wu for BeyondtheSummit, the native cast is done by the StarLadder casting group, lead by Vitalii 'v1lat' Volochai.
StarLadder season 8, prize distribution
1st - $61,000
2nd - $30,000
3rd - $18,000
4th - $12,000
News source: StarLadder.tv
Photo sources: Rog.asus (headline), GosuGamers (news)
