Recap of the six TI9 Regional Qualifiers and their winners

Dota 2
July 19, 2019
Radu Muresan

Finally, the Regional Qualifiers for The International 2019 have come to an end and the already 12 qualified teams found out who the other six competitors will be. In this article, I will take a quick view of the six Regional Qualifiers and their winners.

Regioanl Qualifiers for TI9 ended

© Valve Corporation

Europe

The battle in Europe took place between eight teams, but only three of them proved worthy of discussion. These were Chaos Esports Club, The Final Tribe and Hippomaniacs. Initially, the last two of these three looked stronger and Hippomaniacs won their group. However, Chaos EC’s superstar-filled roster managed to rapidly adapt to the rhythm of the tournament and eventually won very easily, even though they had to go through three Playoffs matches in order to secure their ticket to TI 9.

CIS

The CIS qualifier had a similar story to Europe’s. Except here, the protagonist is a much more famous team. And the fact that they somehow won is still incredible. After missing The International in 2017 and 2018, Natus Vincere is back on the biggest Dota 2 stage of the year.

Na’Vi ‘s path to victory in the CIS region was anything but comfortable. They finished 4th in the group and went on to lose their first match in the Playoffs. But then something happened and they were simply able to beat everyone. With three victories in a row, they qualified and I’m very curious how well they’ll fare against the likes of Secret and Liquid.

North America

In North America, Forward Gaming and J.Storm had a massive advantage over everyone else, so it was only a question of which of the two would turn out to be better. Initially, I honestly expected J.Storm to triumph, thanks to their star-filled roster. But Forward Gaming proved to be much better in their strategies and preparation.

South America

South America had an unlikely winner. Infamous took the glory after both Thunder Predator and paiN Gaming failed to rise to the occasion. Both teams had poor performances compared to what had been expected of them and in the Grand Final, Infamous finished in just three games.

China

China was the closest qualifier of the six, along with SEA’s. Initially, Royal Never Give Up was supposed to win quite easily, as long as they were able to beat EHOME, the other serious rival for the title. In the end, NRG won, but they came very close to losing and not against EHOME, but rather CDEC, a former TI finalist with a new and surprising roster. CDEC managed to somehow qualify for the Grand Final via the Upper Bracket, even though they hadn’t done anything all year. They simply won an Open Qualifier and then almost produced an upset as spectacular as the one in 2015. The Grand Final ended 3 – 2 in favor of RNG.

Southeast Asia

And finally, we have Southeast Asia, where Mineski should have had a free win. But they somehow managed to lose two games against Team Jinesbrus in the Grand Final. This was caused in part by the fact that Junesbrus had the three best Korean players in Dota 2 in their roster.

Dying to find out who will rise to the top at the TI9, check out our top Dota 2 TI9 predictions where we’ll be posting all the latest updates.

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