Team Secret and Evil Geniuses receive direct invites to Captains Draft 4.0 - Minor

SUNSfan and synderN's creation, Captains Draft reached the fourth edition and with the new season format, the tournament becomes the first ever Valve sponsored event to be played in a different game mode than the traditional Captains Mode.

Started in February 2014 by a small DotaCinema crew, Captains Draft has come a long way. From just an online tournament created with the sole purpose of offering something different to the community, Captains Draft started with $20,000 base prize pool and just six directly invited teams to fight for the supremacy in a game mode where they have a 27 heroes limited pool.

When the first edition of Captains Draft took place, the Alliance vs Na’Vi rivalry was defining the competitive scene, Johan "N0tail" Sundstein and Tal "Fly" Aizik were still called by the community “HoN trash boys” and were part of the famous European Fnatic roster (which actually won the inaugural Captains Draft edition), Kalle "Trixi" Saarinen was the most known Finnish player, Sébastien "7ckngMad" Debs and his Sigma team were still a thing and Sam "BuLba" Sosale and Team Liquid were inseparable. At its first edition, Captains Draft received a great welcome from the community who doubled the prize pool via ingame tickets purchases.

With every edition, Captains Draft became even more popular, the community got more and more involved in the heroes ban process. Now, with a $300,000 prize pool and 300 qualifier points to offer, Captains Draft 4.0 becomes a minor and will conclude with a LAN event with live audience.

“

It feels like forever ago when syndereN and I created this tournament. I never dreamed that Captains Draft would ever become a LAN, let alone an official Minor. We are very excited for this opportunity and we hope our viewers will appreciate a little bit of diversity in an otherwise cluttered circuit.” -SUNSfan

Team Secret and Evil Geniuses received the only two direct invites to the event, while six other teams will be joining them via regional qualifiers that will kick off this coming weekend, October 28, with the South American brackets. Four to six teams per regions will fight in a double elimination bracket format, bo3 series and bo5 grand finals with the winner of each region qualifying for the LAN event. The Captains Mode LAN will take place January 4-7 in Washington, at a yet to be announced venue.