The first day of the $1 million Dota 2 tournament is drawing to a close. The matches that have been streamed live throughout the day have given us our first look at the game, and Valve's brilliant e-sports spectator features . Here's a brief overview of how the tournament is progressing so far, with links to the latest replays and results.
Players have been battling through the group stage today. Each team in the four groups have to play every other team in their group once before it's decided who will progress to the next stage. The winners from each group will be entered into the winners' bracket and the runners up will be entered into the Losers' bracket. From then on, it's a straightforward knockout tournament. The winner of the winners' bracket will eventually face off against the winner of the losers' bracket for a chance to win first prize.
You can see the four group tables as they stand now on the Dota 2 site . The schedule page will give you access to a comprehensive scoreboard (or "match page," as they're called)for every match that has been played so far, including precise stats on each players's gold per minute earnings, XP per minute gains, last hits, denies and kills. The Results page will eventually host replays of every match, but there are two you can watch right now, TyLoo vs. OK.Nirvana.cn (embedded above, skip to the 11:30 mark to reach the start of the match straight away) and OK.Nirvana.Int vs Virus . Replays will also be added to the Dota 2 Youtube channel .
There's been some noticeable lag from the matches streamed today, but that could be down to a flaky connection in Cologne. We've had some trouble getting words and pictures back from our men at the conference, Owen and Graham. Hopefully the situation will improve for the next round of competition tomorrow. Have you been watching today's tournament? Let us know your first impressions of Dota 2 in the comments below.
