Dota 2′s SECS Coming To A Close, Here’s More Details

The Sunday Evening Cup Series (SECS) is a fairly new addition to the world of Dota 2 in South Africa. The idea behind it was adopted from a similar tournament hosted in North and South America which has been running successively for several years now. Spit-Wad of NADota.com, when approached, was more than happy to share his tournament in the spirit of promoting competitive play around the world.

In South Africa the competitive Dota 2 scene was dominated by four teams for the most part of 2012: Bravado Gaming, Energy eSports, Immersion (formerly Bashers) and ROCC (formerly ASF). SECS was meant to bring about new teams and give them a chance to compete against the fearsome four in a hope that they could learn a thing or two with an added bonus of causing inevitable upsets.

The task of handling such a competition was given to tournament veteran Matthew ‘FluKe’ Merks and his organization PolarFluke who immediately focussed all their attention to hosting the tournament successfully. The games would be broadcast as well, with a main game in each round streamed live for those who wished to follow their favorite teams and also gain some insight into the mechanics of Dota 2. The shoutcasters for the SECS event is Kyle ‘Congo’ Wolmarans, Devin ‘HellBirD’ Rigotti, Drew ‘Hari’ Penn and Ben ‘Noxville’ Steenhuisen.

 

How Does SECS Work?

The format for SECS is as follows: The cup runs for a season of five weeks with the last week being a playoff week. The tournament style follows the Swiss format of a double-sided single-elimination bracket which gives teams a chance to have more than one competitive game in that Sunday’s bracket. The games are best of one which makes the cup a little less time consuming for those who cannot afford to play long drawn out tournaments over a weekend. An added bonus to best of one games has to be that they’re mostly fast paced and action packed as teams know if they lose this, they’re out.

Points are awarded as follows: 2 points for a win in the winner’s bracket (including round one), and 1 point per win in the loser’s bracket. The points accumulate throughout the season leading up to the playoff week where the eight teams with the most points will be seeded into a playoff bracket. If there is a tie for eighth place a tie-breaker match will be held to determine the team. At the end of the five week season the winning team will receive 3 bonus points, the runner up will receive 2 and the winner of the lower bracket will receive 1 bonus point.

After a successful first season, SECS was picked up by MyGaming in partnership with PolarFluke who both shared the same vision for competitive eSports in South Africa. MyGaming provided a well structured website to handle the registration of teams, advertising and promotion of the cup as well as a cash prize for the top two teams amounting to R3000. Although the cash prize is nothing to rival major competitions at the moment, with growing interest in competitive gaming in South Africa, I feel as if I can confidently say in the near future we could see some serious paychecks flying out.

Host Matt ‘FluKe’ Merks had the following to say, “SECS has been a great success so far. We are hoping as the seasons carry on that more teams join in we see much more competition from our gamers. We will be confirming the next season with MyGaming soon and are sure to have bigger and better prizes as time goes on.”

 

Who Can Play?

Anyone can join in. Every Wednesday, before the Sunday’s bracket, registrations open where teams can sign up to take part in that Sunday’s Cup. Obviously the more you sign up and play, the better chance your team has of making the playoff.

The full rulebook and registration information is available here.

 

What’s Happening At The Moment?

The current season of SECS is in its fifth week of play, with the final bracket completed this week. The tournament started on the 10th of February and will conclude this Sunday, 10th of March, with the final 5th week playoff for the cash prize. The final standing leading into the playoffs can be seen below.

 
Bravado Gaming and Energy eSports topped the table after the four weeks of play, where their rise to the top is one to be noted.

Energy pulled off a few neat tricks against Team Immersion where an early Roshan in week two’s semi-final saw an overpowered solo mid Tinker, played by Wasim ‘seeM’ Lorgat, completely run down the Brewmaster, played by Wazeer ‘waz_mac’ Kamdar, causing Immersion to tilt into an inevitable loss.

In week 3 the two titans met again, in the semi-final, where Immersion came prepared for an early Roshan, but were instead baited into a trap from an Earthshaker Fissure and Keeper Of The Light Illuminate which lead to Leon ‘Flarez’ Wong grabbing up a triple kill with Naga Siren–before the creeps even spawned.

As promised, there were a few upsets too, notably Matt’s FUN Buddies (MfB) shocking teams, viewers and shoutcasters with their early game aggression. MfB were able to knock out Veneration eSports in round one of week one, as well as ROCC Dota2 in the semi-final of week one. In week three, MfB knocked Energy eSports into the lower bracket in round one.

All teams involved played outstandingly throughout the season, where leading into the playoff bracket on Sunday a clear prediction cannot be made.

With roster changes looming over the top teams after the doGaming transfer window opened last week, who knows what may happen. I’ve been promised that there is a surprise coming in this weekend’s playoff final.