Time for part 2. After
MGC 2008 and
ASUS Autumn 2008, major competitive dota events keep on entertaining us with the hosting of prestigious events including
Sendi Mutiara Multimedia (SMM) Dota Tournament 2008),
Dreamhack Winter 2008 and
Asian DotA Championship (ADC) season 2 playoff stage. ADC season 2 is still underway with 4 teams left, double elimination format.
Yes, it is as you read. SMM Tournament is held in Berjaya Times Square, Malaysia on 21st to 23rd November. It is an annual event which offer a plentiful amount of cash prize. Believe me, the prize offered in this tournament exceed any other prize offered in any other online/LAN tournament (maybe except ESWC), just look at the tournament outcome below and see how much did the first place winner get. This reason alone would be enough to lure many international teams into this events. Unfortunately, some invited teams were not able to come to the event, either because they could not afford the fee to fly to Malaysia+accommodation, or due to last minute problems (as in
Rush3D and
MYM). With these teams not participating, not SMM is officially an Asian-exclusive tournament. Nevertheless they're still entertaining with the inclusion of China's top 2 teams,
CanT and
EHOME, as well as Singapore's finest
eVo`XtC.
Map Version: v6.57b
Mode: -CM Captains Mode
Patch: 1.22tournament outcome:
EHOME - 10, 132.28 + Hardware
eVo`XtC - $5,066.14 + Hardware- CaNt - $3,658.88 + Hardware
Kingsurf - $1377.41 + Hardware- Fnatic - $413.22 + Hardware
- Survivor - $358.13 + Hardware
- UCpro-tbun`w4s| - $303.03 + Hardware
- PGA - $275.48 + Hardware
Links:
It is as you see. EHOME won the tournament with 0 losses throughout the whole tournament. Really impressive performance by them, considering they arrive in Malaysia very late on Friday 21st November and have to make up for the games they didn't manage to play in time. 2nd place is Singaporean team eVo. I don't want to be a stupid fanboy, but words have it that during their loser bracket match against KS, one of their player (the person who play ES) manually disconnected after he was dead, and KS willingly agreed for a reload which happened to be quite a long time ago, around 5th minute when eVo got the first blood, and and by the time he disconnected, KS was overwhelmingly at advantageous position to win the match. I don't want to jump to conclusion yet, but TofuBoi barely give explanation as why his teammate DC, rather all he stated in DA-forum is the rules regarding the point-systems for reload. So yeah, until they are proven innocent, they're still cheaters to me. Who care, I'm KS fanboy after all XD
recommended replay: I personally don't have much time to watch most of the replay, but 1 that really caught my attention is
Kingsurf vs eVo, Playoff round 2. Unexpected push strat by eVo (4 minutes vanguard Axe and 6 minutes outer tower downs O_o), but even more impressive defending by KS to make their way back into the game, let spectre farmed and win the game. Recommended!
......................................................................................................................
DreamHack Winter 2008 was held in Jönköping, Sweden and has just ended yesterday. A lot of top european teams participated in this events including
MYM,
SK,
Mouz,
DMZ,
MET and
Gvision. Before the tournament started, a lot of these teams had problems to field 5 man rosters due to some of their players not being able to arrive on time (MYM|Fear lulz), while others due to inactivity of some of their original roster. Hence, these teams took in some of the well known player who didn't participate in DH into their team to play for this event. MYM recruited formet Mouz PlaymatE to replace the stranded Fear, Mouz recruited KS.Int player Puppey (they even permanently adding him into the lineup), while DmZ temporarily rectuited another KS.Int player GunZ.
Map Version: v6.57b
Mode: -CM Captains Mode
Patch: 1.22touenament outcome:
Meet Your Makers - $3,407.16
SK Gaming - $1,388.10 
Mousesports - $630.95
links:
In the lin above, you can also find some interviews with the participated players including Puppey, PlaymatE, GunZ, SK.Kwom, dmZ|Sond and MET|Misery. Anyway conratulations to MYM for winning the Dreamhack for the...I don't remember for how much time already. Despite Mouz being one of the heavy favorite to win this tournament, MYM was able to outplay them in their winner bracket semi final match. IMO PlaymatE really fills in the role left behind by Fear. He played a nice carry in many of their games. As Sa, Gondar, and in the grand final against SK, as DK. I wouldn't be surprised if soon I'll see someone with clantag MYM|PlaymatE. Mouz on the other hand who seems confident to take the first plce prize, failed to do so when they lost to SK in loser bracket final against SK, with remarkable sub-par performance by Miracle for some reasons. They, however did try some interesting strat, including
level 1 roshan with Lich+Syllabear combo against MYM (which have been done many times in organised pub games), but failed.
There's not much highlighted replay I can recommend because most of the game went just like many other 6.57 replays, with the diverse heroes pick and strats. I myself haven't watch many of them as of yet, except a few MYM replays. Oh, one more reason to watch MYM replays: they brougt back the oldschool Pudge+Omni combo :3
ps: credit to Champ for some of the links.
RuSh3D - $1,695.42
DTS.Chatrix - $1,130.28
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