The Korean groupstage of StarSeries Season 9 enters its final playday tomorrow, with the top four teams already securing positions in the playoffs.
After the round robin of 6 matches, each team only has one match left to play on the 17th March - the last playday for the Korean groupstage. However, with the current standings, the last day matters only for teams in terms of placing and seeding into the regional playoffs.
MVP.Phoenix, BirdGang, MVP.Hot6 and Monkey Spanner have qualified for the LAN elimination playoffs due to be held on 22, 27 and 29 March. MVP.Phoenix look set to continue their dominant streak in the group stage so far, having gone 6-0 and winning out against their strongest rivals, BirdGang (formerly StarTale, winners of the Nexon Sponsorship League season 1).
The four teams will participate in a double elimination bracket which will grant the top team winning an all-expenses paid trip to Kiev for the Season IX LAN finals on 17-20 April. The Korean regional LAN playoffs will be held at the GomTV Gangnam Studio, and be streamed on the official StarLadder Twitch streams, casted by BeyondTheSummit in English and Starladder.TV in Russian.
The winning team will be joined by a total of 4 teams from the European group, 2 teams from the Chinese playoffs that are set to begin on 18 March, and another team from the North American playoffs.
It is interesting to note that Nexon was in charge of the invitations for the qualifiers of this StarSeries, and they chose to snub Team Zephyr as well as Eye of Tiger, both teams staffed by foreigners despite playing in the Korean Dota League. As a result, the Korean representative is guaranteed to be ethnically Korean, and will be seeking to make waves in Kiev on the LAN finals.
