Blood in The Streets (B.I.T.S.) is a new European tournament to hit the Dota 2 scene, with seven teams invited and one gaining entry via a People’s Choice Qualifier. B.I.T.S is a double elimination best of three tournament, with a best of five grand finale and a $5000 prize pool. We here at Antlion are proud to be sponsoring this first-time event as a main sponsor and want to continue to support the Dota 2 community!
From the start the hype around this tournament has been interesting, with the disbanded Ninjas In Pajamas originally keeping their spot and changing their team name to Dirty Minds to compete in the tournament, to only finally withdraw. While their former teammate SyndereN’s new team Crescendo makes their tournament debut at B.I.T.S. and are currently 0-1 and will compete this Sunday in an attempt to keep their hopes alive.
The tournament is wrapping up its first week and semifinals will be starting in just under two weeks and thus far I can say I have been very impressed with the overall production value, especially for a first time event. The selection of guest casters have been very good, providing exciting commentary in both English and Russian ( I assume the Russian commentary is as good as the English but I am not fluent in Russian.) While the game play has been electric, with games going to three rounds on the first day making for some exciting highlights.
We reached out to First Blood to see how they felt the tournament was going and Auryn Macmillan their Community Director responded:
“Going into this, we were all a little unsure what to expect. But the fan reception and quality of play that we have seen through the People's Choice Qualifier and the first round of BITS has blown us all away.
So much hype, so many great players, so many massive plays, and we are not even through the first round!
Having Antlion Audio on board as our main partner for BITS has been huge, ensuring all that hype from our casters comes through crystal clear.”
Make sure you catch the elimination game between M19 and Crescendo Sunday June 18th at 7am/pst on First Blood’s Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/firstbloodio where you can also catch-up on all the first round matches you may have missed!