ESL one have announced their seventh direct invite to the $1,000,000 Major. It’s Vici Gaming who will play in Poland’s first ever Dota 2 LAN event.
Interestingly enough, the event was initially announced with 10 direct invites and six qualified teams, which makes a total of 16 participants. The total number of attending teams hasn’t changed but it seems that ESL decided to change their mind on the direct invites, same as they recently did with the Genting Minor. According to a tweet of ESL One from earlier today Vici Gaming are “the seventh out of eight direct invites”.
So far ESL One invited to the Katowice Major all the top seven teams in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings. Vici Gaming and OG are tied on the seventh place with 540 points accumulated. However, OG are on the outside invite list until now, but this can of course, change once ESL will announce the last direct invite. It will be interesting to see if they chose to go with a total of three European squads invited or if they go for the next team in the rankings, which is Na’Vi, sitting on the 9th spot in ranking with a total of 315 points.
It’s unclear what happens with the remaining two slots that were initially included in the direct invites. For ESL One Genting, the organizers decided to grant an extra qualifying spot to the European region, but what they have in mind for the ESL One Katowice Major remains to be seen. The open qualifiers for the event will start this coming weekend, January 6-7, and all those interested to test their strength can register HERE. The closed regional qualifiers will happen January 9-12 in all the six big regions, with the main event scheduled to take place February 20-25 at the Spodek Arena in Katowice, Poland.
ESL One Katowice Major teams so far:
Virtus.pro
Team Secret
Team Liquid
Evil Geniuses
Mineski
Vici Gaming
