The International 2021 officially starts tomorrow and the first part of the tournament is the Group Stage. This is usually revealed a few days before but for some reason, it’s only now that we get to know the Dota 2 team groups. There’s a total of 18 teams participating in the tournament but only 16 spots are available in the Main Event.
The Group Stage follows a round-robin format with each match being a Bo2. For each group, the top four teams get to advance to the Upper Bracket with the next four teams going to the Lower Bracket. The lowest placed team in each group gets eliminated. Unlike in the majors, the teams eliminated take home a little piece of the pie. For TI10, they get $100,000 each.
Group A
- Alliance
- Team Aster
- Evil Geniuses
- Invictus Gaming
- OG
- T1
- Thunder Predator
- Undying
- Virtus.Pro
For Group A, we predict these:
- Top 4
- Evil Geniuses
- T1
- Invictus Gaming
- Virtus.Pro
- Eliminated
- Undying
- Dark Horse
- OG
There’s no question that Evil Geniuses is one of the favorites heading to TI10. They’ve had a strong performance in the regular season as their issues seem to be closing out when it matters. T1 is a strong contender as well and is another team to watch out for.
Invictus Gaming is also likely to get in the top four given its previous performance. The last spot goes to Virtus.pro though based on the regular season, they probably won’t have that much of an impact in the main event.
Considering all teams in this group, Undying is highly likely to be eliminated. To be fair, they’ve always been behind EG and Quincy Crew in the NA region.
Finally, we choose OG as the dark horse. They haven’t been doing well and considering what happened recently, they may not be as ready compared to others. However, you can't count them out as they usually have something up their sleeve.
Group B
- Beastcoast
- Elephant
- Fnatic
- PSG.LGD
- Quincy Crew
- SG Esports
- Team Secret
- Team Spirit
- Vici Gaming
For Group B our predictions are:
- Top 4
- PSG.LGD
- Elephant
- Team Secret
- Vici Gaming
- Eliminated
- SG Esports
- Dark Horse
- Fnatic
Group B has the strongest teams from China and given what happened in the regular season, PSG.LGD is a shoo-in for the main event. Given their roster, Elephant also has a good chance to join the top four. Of course, Vici Gaming is likely to be there.
The only non-Chinese team entering the top four is Team Secret. They haven’t done so well when it comes to the majors but they remain to be a top team in Western Europe.
The team to be eliminated is probably SG Esports. Their performance hasn’t been consistent and they even went down in Season 2.
For our dark horse, it has to be Fnatic. They’ve been doing well in the SEA and they are more than ready to show that they can go toe-to-toe with the best teams in the world.
What about you? Who are your picks for the Group Stage?
