The first major Southeast-Asian tournament of the year will start this Saturday, as the month-long ACG SEA Invitational: Best of The Best will start its group stage then. A total of 18 teams from seven different countries will compete for the prize pool of cash and merchandise valued at $7,200.
ACG SEA Invitational will be a multi-stage tournament, with a round-robin group stage and a single-elimination playoffs. The tournament is to run throughout almost the entirety of March, with the first game of the groups scheduled on 1 March and the grand finals set on 29 March. All game days are Saturdays, except for potential tiebreakers.
The first three Saturdays will be for the group stage. A team will play a best-of-three match against every other team on his group. A 2-0 score would give the winning team three points, while a 2-1 score will give the teams a point for each of ther win (two points for the winner, one point for the loser).
The top two teams per group will advance into the single-elimination playoffs, wherein the teams will be seeded depending on how they finished on the group stage. Again, all matches will best-of-three. Tiebreakers will be played on weekdays if they are necessary to determine the advancing teams. The playoffs is set to happen on the last two Saturdays of March.
The invited teams were divided across four groups, with the first two groups having four teams each and the latter two getting five teams apiece. The teams are distributed in such a way that no teams from the same country will be on the initial groupings. A specific match schedule will be available upon hovering the mouse over on the matches under the group schedule's drop down content.
There will be an in-game ticket available at the Dota 2 Store valued at $1.99 for those who wish to follow the games via DotaTV. It will be streamed on at least five different language, with the English cast featuring a plethora of casters which includes GoDz, Lily, Flava and Xyclopz among others.
The winning team will get $2,000, while the runner-up and third placer will receive $1,000 and $500 respectively. There are also merchandises to be given away, among of which are Dota 2 HeroClix Starter set for all participants.
Source: E-Club
