The Belarus capital of Minsk is the home to the £300,000 Star Ladder Star Series Season 13 & i-League Season 4 Dota 2 tournament this week. Over the past few months eight teams have joined 
the four other teams that were directly invited to the offline stages of the tournament to battle it out in Belarus for a shot at the $100,000 first prize.
The dozen teams will battle it out in two groups, each team facing the others in its group once. The winners of the group will progress directly into the semi final stages of the competition. The teams that finish 2nd and 3rd in the group will play off against teams finishing in the same positions in the other group in the first playoff round.
The teams that finish 4th through to 6th place in each group are eliminated from the competition.
The winners of the two play off group games will then progress on to face each of the group winners in the semi finals, with the winners then contesting the final, which is slated to take place on Sunday 17th January.
The first group games get under way on Wednesday 13th January and the groups have been drawn as follows:
- Group A – Evil Geniuses, Alliance, LGD Gaming, Team Spirit, Natus Vincere, Fnatic
- Group B – Team Secret, Virtus.pro, Vega Squadron, Team Liquid, Wings Gaming, compLexity Gaming
This is a tough competition as there is little room for error given that all matches in the competition are being played over a Best of One format, which means lose the game against your opponents and you do not have a chance to put things right in a subsequent game.
It is worth noting here that Team Spirit is in fact made up of members of the former team CIS Rejects, who had qualified for the competition but who now make up the new team.
A quick look at the latest eSports betting for the competition reveals that currently Bet365 have the Evil Geniuses team as the 9/4 favourites to win the event, with Team Secret a 7/2 second favourite ahead of Team Liquid (5/1) and Virtus Pro (11/2). The teams who are viewed as the rank outsiders include Fnatic (40/1), compLexity Gaming (50/1) and Wings Gaming (60/1).
Enjoy Plenty Of Top Quality League of Legends Betting This Week With The Spring Series
Starting on Thursday 14th January 2016, one of the biggest events in the League of Legends calendar gets under way this week as the first of two huge qualification events for the 2016 World Championship starts with several regional qualification sections around the world.
The 2016 League of Legends Spring Season is a series of online qualifiers split into five different regions around the world. The top six teams will qualify for the playoffs, the 7th place teams will qualify for the Summer playoff series, while the teams finishing lower take on teams from lower echelons of the game to decide if they remain in the group or are relegated out of it.
There are five regional qualification groups around the world and each of the groups, together with the teams competing in each group are outlined below:
- North America LCS – Cloud9, Counter Logic Gaming, Echo Fox, Immortals, NRG eSports, Renegades, Team Dignitas, Team Impulse, Team Liquid, Team SoloMid
- Europe LCS – Elements, Fnatic, G2 Esports, Giants Gaming, H2k-Gaming, Origen, Spiyce, Team ROCCAT, Team Vitality, Unicorns of Love
- Korea LCK – Afreeca Freecs, CJ Entus, e-mFire, Jin Air Green Wings, KT Rolster, Longzhu Gaming, ROX Tigers, Samsung Galaxy, SBENU Sonicboom, SK Telecom T1
- China LPL – LGD Gaming, Snake eSports, Qiao Gu Reapers, Team WE, Masters 3, Energy Pacemaker.All, EDward Gaming, Invictus Gaming, Vici Gaming, Royal Never Give Up, Oh My God, Hyper Youth Gaming
- Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao LMS – ahq e-Sports Club, COUGAR E-Sport, Flash Wolves, Hong Kong Esports, Machi E-Sports, Midnight Sun Esports, Taipei Assassins, Heat Wave
The online section sees each of the teams in the group section playoff in a round robin event over nine consecutive weeks of games after which each of the ten teams in the regional qualifier are ranked and their fates decided.
The only exception to this rule is the China LPL event, which sees two groups of six teams, rather than one group of ten, initially. The top four from each of the Chinese groups earning a place in the playoff events later in the year.
Bet365 Sport is already offering a huge number of betting markets on each of the five regional events and there are multiple betting markets available for each of these qualification competitions including backing which team in each regional section to win outright, as well as a number of match betting options and specialist total bets (such as the total number of Dragons slain in a game).
CS:GO Red Dot Invitational Reaches Its Climax This Week
Eight of the best Counter Strike: Global Offensive teams have been battling it out since mid-November to earn their place in the CS:GO Red Dot Invitational Semi Finals and now just four teams 
remain after the Closed Qualifiers and Arbre Final events in November and December.
After the qualifiers, it was Vexed Gaming and E.Frag.net Esports Club that earned their place in the Quarter Finals in December, but both teams fell at the first hurdle against two of the six invited teams, Team EnvYus defeating Vexed Gaming 2-0 in the first quarter final while ? defeated e-Frag.net EC 2-1 in the third.
In the other two quarter finals in December Team Dignitas (who beat Hellraisers 2-0) and Titan (2-1 winners over Team LDLC White) also earned their place in this weeks Semi Finals, with Team EnvYus taking on Team Dignitas and ? facing Titan in the Semi Finals taking place later on Monday 11th January.
The two winners will then go head to head later on in the evening to decide which team takes home the lions share of the $50,000 prize pool.
Bet365 currently have Team EnvYus as the 4/5 favourites to win the event with ? a 6/5 shot. Team Dignitas are 14/1 while Titan are the 25/1 shot outsiders.
