The veteran teams showed what they are made off, with arguably no upsets happening on the first playday of the AsianCyberGames best-of-the-best SEA invitational.
The tournament started with a very long first playday, with a total of 16 best-of-three matches scheduled on the first Saturday. More than half of the games held today finished with a 2-0 score, with the favorites comfortably winning against the underdogs.
There are also big-name match-ups which happened on the groups today, one per group. Three of those four ended up in 2-1, which include Malaysia's Titan defeating Philippines' Execration and Thailand's MiTH.Trust overcoming Singapore's First Departure. The other one is the win by the rising Arrow Gaming of Malaysia, which edged out Philippine's Mineski. Notable is the third game of that series, on which Arrow utilized a farmed Sandking on their lineup.
The only high-profile head-to-head battle which didn't take three games was the Group C match-up of Malaysia's Orange eSports and Singapore's Scythe, with the latter winning via straight games. The 2-0 score however does not reflect how close the games actually were, with no game finishing before the 53-minute mark.
Not all of the day's scheduled matches were played, as several were marked as either forfeited or postponed. We are still waiting word from the organizer as to the exact status of these matches.
A participating 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 after finishing their round-robin will advance into the single-elimination playoffs. Tiebreakers will be played on weekdays if they are necessary to determine the advancing teams.
The second playday of the tournament will be next Saturday, 8 March, wherein around 13 games will be played. Those interested to download replays of the finished games, or those who want to watch the upcoming matches via DotaTV can purchase the in-game ticket available at the Dota 2 Store valued at $1.99. The English cast wil include GoDz, Lily, Flava and Xyclopz among others.
The winning team of this tournament will walk away with $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.
