Last night, the American division of StarLadder's tenth season kicked off, followed by the European one today. TI3 champions Alliance, the "Secret Team" and many more new rosters will represent themselves on one of Europe's biggest stages for Dota 2. The kick-off match will be between Alliance and Cloud9.
Yesterday, the first playday of StarLadder's American division took place. It is the kick-off for the new season after TI, as the Western teams take on a regular tournament schedule again. The American division will last several weeks until the round-robin groupstage is completed, after which the top four will advance to a double-elimination playoff bracket to determine the one team that will fly out to Kiev.
Today, Europe will kick-off and will do so in style. TI3 champions Alliance will take on Cloud9. While the latter has already confirmed their new roster, Alliance will be using two stand-ins. Rumors say, that these stand-ins, which are likely to be former HoN player Chessie and former mousesports player MiSeRy-, are in fact the new members of the team that have yet to be officially announced.
Another new and interesting team will be NVMI. The team consisting of DK.Phobos and Goblak has secured themselves the last spot in the tournament via the qualifier. However interesting this may be though, it is unlikely to spark as much interest as the "Secret Team". It is very likely to be a team consisting of Puppey, Kuroky, s4, BigDaddy and Fly, but no official statements have been made yet.
The European division is the largest of the four StarLadder Season X regions and will thus boast four LAN spots. However, the online stage will not include a playoff bracket and is set to conclude after the round-robin groupstage with possible tie-breakers.
The tenth anniversary of the Starladder boasts an impressive $80,000 base prize pool with $2.50 from the sale of each ticket going directly to the prize pool. As always, the ticket will be bundled with an in-game item, this time it will feature a Tiny set.
Live broadcasting of the games will be provided by BeyondTheSummit in English and SLTV in Russian.
