After two weeks of intense battles, exciting comebacks, and surprising upsets Dota 2 has a new champion at its 2016 International Championships (TI6). Wings Gaming defeated Digital Chaos (DC) three games to one last night. DC started out strong by winning the first game after breaking Wings’ map control. Wings kept their composure and quickly fired back winning game two by capitalizing on DC’s bad positioning throughout the second game. DC appeared thrown off by the loss and during game three started struggling almost immediately. Wings went on to take game four to secure their victory, winning the best of five.
Wings Gaming will take home $9.1 million from a more than $20 million prize pool, the biggest in eSports history. Each member of the five-man Wings roster will take home close to $2 million. However, don’t feel bad for the runners up – Digital Chaos will take home $3.4 million.
Wings, who represents the Chinese region, was founded after 2014’s championship in Seattle from a variety of different disbanding Chinese teams. Wings had some roster challenges initially, but have found stability over the last year. The Wings team is made up of carry player Chu “Shadow” Zeyu, mid Zhou “bLink” Yang, Zhang “Faith_bian” Ruida, and supports Li “IceIce” Peng and 18-year-old captain Zhang “Innocence” Liping.
Few predicted Wings to even make the TI6 tournament after they finished at the bottom of the 2015 Dota Asia Championships. Wings struggled during the group stage of TI6, losing a number of games to better-looking teams. But Wings managed to make to the upper bracket on the main stage of TI6, where they delivered a convincing win over Digital Chaos. They next sent fan-favorites MVP straight to the lower bracket, securing a spot in the upper bracket final. Overall, the tournament was full of surprising upsets. Tournament favorites — Team Liquid, EHOME, OG, and Newbee — were all knocked out early.
The International 2016 was broadcast live on ESPN3 as well as on Twitch. The event drew tens of thousands of people to Seattle’s KeyArena to watch live and hundreds of thousands of viewers online during the last two weeks of play.
Below is the final bracket (along with all the prize winnings) for TI6:
