The International 2023 - North America Qualifier: one team's qualification and the dark horse factor from Ukraine
Maksym ShylovThe current Dota 2 gaming season is reaching the finish line. Ahead of the professional teams awaits the main event of the year, namely the tournament series The International, as well as regional qualifications for The International 2023. As early as this week, there will be confrontations in the six ranked regions for the last vouchers for the Dota 2 World Championship.
North America is among the first to enter the regional race. The International 2023 - North America Qualifier Long will take place on the 17th of August.
In this article we will look at the North America qualifier for The International 2023. Therefore, for all fans of North American Dota 2 should not miss this event. Will any of the participants manage to surprise, or will everything end rather predictably? Then we will look into this question.
The main things about The International 2023 - North America Qualifier: list of participants, format, and dates
North America continues to consistently produce two or three teams that perform at a good level, while all other participants of the region are in the role of catching up. Shopify Rebellion and TSM have already qualified for The International 2023 at the end of the DPC season.
Valve has traditionally allocated a single slot for North American qualification at the World Championship, which will be contested by 13 teams, whose seeding will be based on the number of DPC points earned and their final ranking in the North American Division 1 and Division 2.
List of participants for The International 2023 - North America Qualifier:
- nouns
- felt
- Team DogChamp
- B8
- Wildcard Gaming
- Lucky Bird
- Ravens
- Sand King Gomez
- CDUB Esports
- The Cut
- American goons
- TiltedBoys
- GRIN Esports
All these teams will meet in the Double-Elimination grid, where they will play bo3 matches. And the grand finals will be played in a bo5 series. The International 2023 - North America Qualifier is scheduled from 17th to 21st of August this year. Given the list of contenders, there's a good chance that the qualifiers will be a one-team tournament, although a few surprises could potentially happen.
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Nouns, the region's third team, which is the third team in the region, has every chance of being the first at The International 2023 - North America Qualifier
It has been a trend for a very long time now that there are three teams in North America that are performing at a more or less decent level. They are Shopify Rebellion, TSM and nouns. All three representatives of the region replace each other from time to time, because North America is allocated two slots for Major tournaments. The first two teams have already secured their place at The International 2023, and nouns has a great opportunity to join them at the home TI.
In the regional leagues, Lelis and team finished in third place twice and silver in the last round, which allowed them to go to Bali Major 2023, which nouns failed. But their performance at the Major tournament doesn't really affect our assessment. If you look at the history of facing the rest of the qualifiers, it turns out that nouns beat them all. Only in DPC NA 2023 Tour 2: Division I, in addition to the traditional defeat by SR and TSM, there was a loss to felt team, which also takes part in the qualifiers.
All these factors make nouns the main favourite to win The International 2023 - North America Qualifier, because all other participants are clearly worse than this American club, and Double-Elimination grid gives the right to make a mistake.
B8 - Ukrainian dark horse of The International 2023 - North America Qualifier
The main mystery and uncertainty factor in the North American qualifier for The International 2023 is the B8 team. The Ukrainian club moved to North America this year and has been playing well, which is made more difficult by the team's location.
Recently, Dendi and his squad has strengthened with players such as V-Tune, who previously represented The International heres Natus Vincere, StoneBank, who already played for B8, and Kidaro, who previously played for PuckChamp. Purely nominally, the Ukrainian squad is decent and should be able to fight off the vast majority of the region's representatives. But not everything is so clear-cut.
The main obstacle that will prevent Dendi and his teammates to show their maximum is their location. Most of the players are in Europe, and some of them are in Ukraine. Playing in North America, their teammates will face high ping, which is clearly not favourable for the best performance. Therefore, the B8s can both surprise everyone and fail crushingly due to being in less comfortable conditions.
Who else can impose a competitive fight in the qualifiers?
In addition to the aforementioned collectives, it's also worth noting a few teams that could advance through qualifying. Felt, Team DogChamp and Wildcard Gaming have played in the first division with mixed success, and the last two teams have been in the second division. It's hard to expect them to win, but the strong middles of the region can cause problems.
Conclusion
The International 2023 - North America Qualifier is likely to be a one-team showdown. Nouns are very likely to go to the World Cup unless something supernatural happens. B8 may surprise, but there will still depend on ping problems and chemistry of the renewed squad. In any case, the qualifiers will try their best, because not everyone gets a chance to compete for the World Championship.
Maksym has been working at EGamersWorld since 2017. Joining the company during his first year at university, he worked as a translator until 2022. After that, Maksym began working as an editor. His main discipline is Dota 2, and over time, Maksym's responsibilities expanded to include CS:GO, CS2 and Valorant. Additionally, as an editor, he publishes various materials on gaming topics.