The International 2022 Chinese Qualifier preview

The Chinese regional qualifier for The International 2022 is scheduled to take place between September 8-12. It features 13 teams and only one of them will qualify immediately for the event. Two more will get the opportunity to play in the Last Chance Qualifier.

Luckily for the participants, PSG.LGD and Team Aster are already qualified, so they will not be among their opponents. But there are still several teams that are strong and will create serious problems for each other.

Usually, we see China in a better position. Last year, no less than four teams finished the Dota Pro Circuit in the top 12. But the new rules combined with the poor international results have resulted in a tough year for Chinese Dota.

Tournament rules and participants

The competition doesn’t have a group stage and starts directly in the playoffs. The format used is double-elimination, but only eight of the 13 participants begin their journey in the upper bracket.

The 12th and 13th teams, Fusion and Saiyan respectively, are in a particularly unpleasant situation because they’ll have to play a best-of-one to determine which of them will compete in the second round of the lower bracket. The other three lower bracket teams are already there, waiting for the losers of the first upper bracket round.

The complete list of participants is this:

• Royal Never Give Up
• Xtreme Gaming
• EHOME
• Aries
• Vici Gaming
• CDEC
• Invictus Gaming
• Ybb Gaming
• Team Magma
• LBZS
• ShenZhen
• Team Fusion
• Team Saiyan

Favorites

The strongest teams in the tournament are Royal Never Give Up and Xtreme Gaming. Both of them are light-years ahead of everyone else. Either of these two teams could win the competition, but RNG are slightly better. And they also happen to own one of the best League of Legends teams in the world, so the org probably has high expectations.

The third place will likely be occupied by Vici Gaming, simply because they have a few players, such as Zhou “Yang” Haiyang, who possess vast knowledge of the game and know what it means to succeed at the highest level. Yang’s past results include two Major Finals and a 5th-6th place at The International 2019.

RNG should not have been here, but they had to play the third DPC Major of the season with a stand-in (Anathan “ana” Pham) and unfortunately, they got eliminated right before reaching a top eight position that would have granted them enough points to finish the season in the top 12.

Among RNG’s players, four of them are former TI finalists. The strength of this team is off-the-charts.

The other great competitor in this qualifier is Xtreme Gaming. This team is full of legendary players, including one of the best carries in the world, Zhang “Paparazi” Chengjun.

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