image courtesy of Valve
ESL One Katowice direct invites keep coming. After Virtus.pro, Team Secret and Team Liquid had been confirmed to attend the $1,000,000 event, it’s time for Newbee to be revealed.
Fourth place in the Dota 2 Pro Circuit rankings, Newbee are the fourth directly invited team announced by ESL One for their Katowice Major from February. After their impressive second place at TI7, Newbee kept fighting from the start of the new competitive season. They’ve been top three in three of the Minors and Majors played so far and accumulated a total of 1035 Dota Pro Circuit points. They placed third at the ESL One Hamburg Major, third at the AMD SAPPHIRE DotaPit Minor and took home the trophy of Perfect World Masters Minor. The last Major of 2017, DreamLeague didn’t go as planned and they closed the event on the 5th-6th place, but before going to ESL One Katowice, in February 2018, Newbee have a few other events scheduled in their book.
January 2018 will kick off for Chinese juggernaut with the Galaxy Battles II: Emerging Worlds Major, which can be a very good chance to improve their last Major performance. Right after that, they will be traveling to Malaysia for ESL One Genting, the biggest Minor of the season, for the 400 qualifying points on the line and a 400,000 USD total prize. From Genting, Newbee will switch continents to play in the SL i-League fourth Invitational Minor and only after this they will be arriving in Poland for the ESL One Katowice Major. So, a lot can change in the current Dota Pro Circuit rankings for Newbee who are nearly halfway through the long journey to The International 2018.
ESL One Katowice is the 13th event in the Dota Pro Circuit and will be running February 20-25 at the 11,500 seat Spodek Arena, a venue that has been the home of Intel Extreme Masters World Championships. Although ESL One Katowice Major is a six days event, only the last two days of playoffs will be played out in front of the crowd, on the Spodek Arena’s main stage. Those interested to attend the event live can already purchase their tickets from ticketmaster. Keep in mind that for this Major, ESL One has free entrance as well, but the entry to Spodek Arena will be done through waiting lines two hours after the ticket buyers and no signing sessions with players and teams are available for this option.
