Evening. At the moment there's a huge LAN event taking place in Thailand called the ESTC Winter 2009. As a lot of you guys crave for Asian DotA we thought we'd do our very best to update you as quickly as possible.
With a prize pool of around 6.000$ the event has attracted teams such as Cybertime, Kingsurf and AEON and could be seen as the littlebrother to SMM 09 in Malaysia. Here's the rest of teams participating.
Note: BBH eliminated Trust, surprisingly.
BBH
Valkyrie
XGN
Etny.XtC
Survivor
TZR
Just
iNcExcello
Shooter
Grean Can Fly
Twin
Rsu. DG
Hack 4T
GAK
+GC
Field of Gamer
Mski
VH
AEON.my
Cyber Oasis
Cutto
No Cry
GIS.Alpha
Destiny
Cybertime
Axis.rsc.DotA
Kingsurf
Ngai
Freak
ZEEZ
Zyrt
PMSAsterisk
Another thing special about this event is the 60 min rule. Which means that if a game reaches 60 minutes you'll have to decide a winner by how many towers, kills etc that each team have. It's a very special and unique rule indeed and we caught up with Maelk and he gave us his thoughts about it.
Maelk
- I think it eliminates the purpose of the lategamers, the potential of truly close games where teams are very even and completely removes the chance of a comeback. Then again, teams knows this beforehand and have to adapt their picks and strategies thereafter, so it isn't that big of a deal. I just don't see the reason for such a change in the game. Are the Asians really that keen on farming? :)With that said we're trying our hardest to keep you guys updated about this grand event.
Update
After what seemed to be pretty successful event the team XtC took it home after facing Cybertime in the Grand Finals. KingSurf had a nice run with reports that Yamateh played extremely well. But in the semi-final they lost to XtC due to the 60 minute rule. Mymym has the complete brackets.
Link - http://www.mymym.com/en/news/16751.html
There's also a live broadcast - http://www.bigfestival.net/BIGFestLive/?m=1
