Contents
Let’s dive right in.
Dota 2 ROG MASTERS this weekend
Dota 2 is coming on in a big way, with not only has the Boston Major kicking off in a month’s time, but also the ROG MASTERS taking place in Kuala Lumpur in the next few days.
From Nov. 10 through 13, the competition pits Asia’s best Dota 2 teams against each other in a battle to take home a chunk of the prize pool, which has been confirmed at $150,000.
Two teams earned direct invitations to the event, Fnatic and Team Secret; however, the remaining 10 qualifiers each qualified at one of five different geographic qualification events:
- Natural 9 and Big and Black qualified from Oceania.
- MOL and The Mongolz qualified from East Asia.
- Execration and Mineski GG Network qualified from the South East Asia qualifier.
- MAX.X and EHOME.X were the China qualifiers.
- ENTITy eSports and Aggressive 5 qualified from the Rest of Asia qualifier.
For the first stage of the competition, which will be played in the first two days, the teams have been split into four groups of three, with the top two teams in each group qualifying for the eight team quarterfinals.
From here, the competition is then a straight knockout through to the semifinals and then onto the final, which will be played on Sunday.
The groups have been drawn as follows:
Group A
- MOL
- Natural 9
- Execration
Group B
- MAX.X
- Entity eSports
- Fnatic
Group C
- The Mongolz
- Big and Black
- Team Secret
Group D
- EHOME.X
- Aggressive 5
- Mineski GG Network
On the opening day, there will be two matches from each group completed.
On Friday, the four final group games will take place followed by the four quarterfinal matches. The semifinals are then played on Saturday and the final on Sunday.
All matches are played in a best-of-three format, except for the final, which will be played as a best-of-five.
Bet365 is offering punters a chance to bet on which of the 12 teams will win the event outright. Current thinking is that four teams have a solid chance to win, while the other eight are more outside bets.
Checking esports betting odds, Team Secret are the current 11/8 favourites with three teams, Execration, Mineski and Fnatic all priced as 7/2 second favourites.
EHOME.X are a 33/1 shot, but then the odds on teams winning increase dramatically to 200/1 to ENTITy, 300/1 for The MongolZ, 400/1 for MAX.X, 800/1 for both Big and Black and Natural 9, while the two big outsiders are MOL and Aggressive 5 at 1000/1 apiece.
League of Legends KESPA Cup qualifying round draw finalized
Last week, we brought you news of how the KESPA Cup was shaping up.
This is the first big event for several League of Legends teams that competed, and performed very well, in the recent World Championship event in the 
United States.
The draw for the initial qualifying round has now been made with 12 of the 14 teams competing drawn against each other to compete for one of six places in the quarterfinals.
Two teams, KT Rolster and ROX Tigers, have been seeded through to the quarterfinal stage already and await two of the winners from the qualifying round.
Surprisingly, SK Telecom T1 (the team crowned as world champions just a couple of weeks ago) and the team they beat in the final, Samsung Galaxy, were not seeded in this event.
Both teams will have to battle their way through the qualifying stage if they are to reach the quarterfinals.
The matches for the qualifying stage are as follows:
- Ever vs. CJ Entus
- Seoul City vs. Kongdoo Monster
- Longzhu Gaming vs. Jin Air Green Wings
- Afreeca Freecs vs. MVP
- Samsung Galaxy vs. RisingStar Gaming
- SK Telecom T1 vs. Chungcheongnam
Once the winners of each of these six matches is known, the competition will then progress in a straight knockout format from the quarterfinals, then on to the semifinals, and then the final to decide the winner.
There’s also added incentive for teams that participated in the 2016 LCK Summer event; the team that does not participate in the playoffs (i.e., is knocked out in the qualifying round), excluding SK Telecom T1, will qualify for the IEM Season 11 event in Oakland, California.
Furthermore, the team from the LCK Summer 2016 event that either wins the event, or is the highest place team other than SK Telecom T1, will qualify for IEM Season 11 in Gyeonggi, South Korea.
Bet365 has posted odds on 19 different markets for the Kespa Cup.
As well as Match Winner markets, bettors can place a number of contextual bets, such as on which team will be the first to slay a dragon, or the total number of towers that they will destroy in a game.
Oddly enough, there isn’t an outright winner market available with Bet365 just yet, but people can bet on the first qualifying round of matches, which sees the current world champions, SK Telecom T1 an incredible 1/100 to beat Chungcheongnam in their qualifying round matchup.
Other hot favourites to win their qualifying round games are Samsung Galaxy (1/16) and Kongdoo Monster (1/12), although the other games are looking to be much more evenly contested.
