ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 preview

ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 will be the last Dota 2 tournament of this season, and possibly the last tournament until Spring next year. This is a $1 million competition that features 12 of the world’s best teams, so it’s definitely going to be very fun to watch.

The total duration of the tournament is one week. The location is Malaysia. The exact interval is December 11 – 17. The players in this region are both numerous and passionate, so the audience will probably create a great atmosphere.

The participants will receive non-DPC points. The winner will get 4800 while the last two teams will get just 210. These points will later be used to determine the participants of other ESL tournaments and possibly even Valve events.

DreamLeague Season 21 was the first tournament of the #ESLProTour Season 2; check out how many EPT Points the teams won! 👇 pic.twitter.com/uwUnaReJiH

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) November 29, 2023

Competitive format

The format of ESL One Kuala Lumpur is very basic. The 12 teams will be divided into two groups of six. Each group uses a round-robin format. Every match is best-of-three. The top two teams advance to the upper bracket. The next two teams advance to the lower bracket. The bottom two teams are eliminated.

During the playoffs, every match is best-of-three apart from the Grand Final, which will be a Bo5 series.

Participants

The 12 teams that will compete in ESL One Kuala Lumpur are listed below:

• Azure Ray
• LGD Gaming
• Gaimin Gladiators
• Team Liquid
• Team Secret
• 9Pandas
• BetBoom Team
• Team Falcons
• Invictus Gaming
• Blacklist International
• TSM
• Wawitas Sagazes

For Team Secret and their midlaner, MidOne, this will be a very special event. He’s from Malaysia and he used to win Majors with his current team, from which he departed at the end of 2019. Now that he’s back, he probably wants to prove to his fans that he still has the same fighting spirit he had four years ago.

But Secret will have a tough time in this tournament. There are so many formidable competitors that to be one of the best will require a lot of ingenuity. Among the strongest teams in the race, LGD Gaming, Gaimin Gladiators, and Team Falcons should be regarded with great respect. Team Liquid and BetBoom Team are also very strong, but we need to see what they can do.

In Liquid’s case, the departure of zai might have made them considerably weaker. However, 33 is a strong player and should be able to successfully replace him.

Header: ESL