They mean that there will be an EMEA v EMEA match in the lower bracket if PRX wins, so an EMEA team will necessarily be eliminated in 7th - 8th place.

edited, thanks

Out of the 13 perfect ones that remain:

• 6 predict OpTic and FPX winning
• 5 predict KRÜ and FPX winning
• 2 predict KRÜ and NTH winning

None predict the OpTic and NTH combo, so it’s possible that none of the 15814 total participants will be correct. For reference, if everyone just flipped a coin for each match you would expect 15.44 people to be correct.

It was the most uneven map at Reykjavik with a 59% win on attack. Every other map was at most 54% in either direction, so yeah T.

DRX beat PRX 2-1 after losing the first map, so there is precedent.

shroud wasn’t signed to an org, so signing him was probably much cheaper than people think

OG went 26-0 against Spanish Mix (link) and Vieux Touristes (link) in back-to-back matches on June 28th.

Wouldn’t that just help TenZ if everyone starts leaning back to Jett?

Coming soon to an event near you: sinatraa, zombs, SicK, Kanpeki, and Dani.

I haven’t watched much of V1 in quite a while, so I was wondering what people thought of these two? To me, they seem to be the only viable replacements for Kanpeki (i.e., they have high-level experience and are not already on an LCQ team), so do you think SEN made the right choice (if they had a choice) in choosing Zellsis?

For Stage 1 of 2021, there were three Masters events in EMEA (EU, CIS, and Turkey).

It’s generally true for all high-level competitors. Every World Cup winner since 2006 has failed to make it out of the group stage of the following World Cup, and Gambit is the only Valorant team to place in the top four at two consecutive tournaments.

Is it really an upset if KRÜ is now 5-0 against Brazilian teams?

I don’t have the clip, but he said something on his stream about post-LCQ being undecided right now. So the current deal is for LCQ, but it is possible that he could continue to play with them for Champions if they were to qualify.

now i’m annoyed again that we have to wait until november for the world cup to start

I think EG or SR have a better chance than TSM.

anything from Wild Force (2002) to Mystic Force (2006)

While it is possible that Will can improve, or that 100T can modify their gameplay to put Will in better situations, I think it’s unlikely that they’d keep him if they had the opportunity to get Sayaplayer or koalanoob. Both have significantly better FK/FD and would likely have a pretty immediate positive effect. I think the rest of the team is solid enough, and I doubt they’d be able to get other top duelists from more established teams, so Saya and koala are my picks.

XSET don’t play until the 14th or 15th so they’re fine. Same with PRX, LEV, and FNC.

This is starting to border on the “trans women in college sports” argument. If y’all want to actually learn something, maybe just read up on that instead cause you’re not going to get very far talking about something this niche. There are also plenty of other cases outside of Valorant where something is meant for a particular group of people but there isn’t really a way to prove that you belong to that group. I mean what are they going to do, make you take a DNA test and trace your ancestry to make sure you’re Hispanic or something? There will always be some level of honor on the part of the people participating, and anyone who thinks that players will just lie about their status for something like this is super disconnected from reality.

I believe it is possible to get seven kills with only two orbs:

1. The enemy Sage starts the round with her ult ready, and you (Sage) are on defense with at least three ult points.
2. You kill an enemy and the enemy sage revives them.
3. You kill four more enemies, leaving only the enemy Sage alive.
4. The enemy sage kills all of your teammates, you revive one, and she kills the one you revived.
5. The enemy sage collects both ult orbs and plants the spike, then revives another teammate.
6. You kill the last two enemies.

No? If Fnatic don’t win any matches at Copenhagen they could still be overtaken by FPX and GUILD. Same for FPX. One of them is guaranteed to qualify for Champions but not both.

Cryo is 37-19 against yay this year, so not really. OpTic is just better overall.

I’m pretty sure XSET automatically qualifies for Champions if they win playoffs (assuming first seed gets a pass to the top eight like they did at Reykjavik).

Gambit: 3-11 to 13-11 on Icebox
Acend: 7-12 to 14-12 on Breeze
FaZe: 4-10 to 14-12 on Split

Nadeshot must be giving them steroids to boost their clutch gene.

I’m not saying they won’t, but they also went 5-0 and only dropped two maps in Stage 1 before falling in the playoffs.

But NAVI won against BIG and BIG won against M3C, so isn’t H2H pretty useless as a tiebreaker in this case since there’s a cycle?

should BIG win against BBL next Sunday and M3C lose against Liquid, therefore placing both teams at 2-3, BIG will go through to the playoffs.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe NAVI can still qualify as well if they win their match against GUILD and end up in a three-way tie with M3C and BIG at 2-3.

FNS has played 16 matches (39 maps) on LAN in Valorant. Boaster has played 12 matches (29 maps) so idk where you’re getting this idea.

If NRG and TSM get eliminated from Group A (which seems pretty plausible rn), I think SEN qualifies for LCQ. This is assuming there are 8 teams in LCQ, since they’re already guaranteed to be above Knights, Version1, and Rise on the circuit point rankings.

I am currently a junior at Caltech (majoring in CS) and I just want to say that my financial aid has been amazing. That being said, financial aid is harder to get for international students at any U.S. college, so your experience may be different. Also, the ‘t’ in Caltech is not supposed to be capitalized but tbh I don’t really care.

The only correct pickem for the group stage: https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/8424b56a

SEN has won Bind 12/13 times since TenZ joined. ACE has won 28/31 over that same time period (not including the current game against Envy). If they meet in quarters, surely Bind will be played, right? I think SEN takes it as long as no one significantly underperforms, but that would be a banger of a map either way.

I don’t see what’s confusing about this? He repeatedly claimed that their region was being insensitively attacked before zombs said anything, and was clearly trying to rile up his followers and make SEN look worse in this scenario than they were. Yes, things went way too far, but he definitely helped to escalate the situation so this tweet just reads as someone trying to avoid culpability by trying to claim the moral high ground.

And before someone claims that I’m just some dumb NA fanboy, I was born in Brazil so I’m not biased against them, I just have the US flag because I go to college in California.

I mean that’s pretty hypocritical after his previous tweets but ok.

I believe that the NV v X10 match was moved to the end of the day to make it easier for them to accommodate COVID quarantine gameplay, so the schedule on here looks correct to me.

All of the answers so far have been memes, but in reality I think it’s just because Turkey is the second-largest country in Europe by population (slightly ahead of Germany) and its players are concentrated into fewer teams because the Valorant server in Istanbul is pretty far from other servers in Europe, which also forced them to be their own VCT region. Other European countries don’t get as much attention because their players are split across several teams (aside from GUILD) so people don’t focus as much on their nationality.

If Envy win, they will have faced the top-seed teams from EMEA, BR, LATAM, and NA (as well as the #2 seed from NA) which is about as hard of bracket as you could ask for without throwing in Vision Strikers.

They’re the only team who have not dropped a map. In NA tradition, it follows that they must now finish Berlin with a flawless run.

How many teams did y’all predict correctly through your pick’ems? I got 13/16 because I didn’t expect SMB, HL, or VIVO to make it (which is kind of ironic since I was born in Brazil).

TL lost to NAVI, NAVI lost to VGIA, VGIA lost to OXG, and OXG lost to TL.

Why is the Upper Final worth 20 points in the NA tournament pick’em, but the same match is only worth 15 points in the Japan/Brazil tournaments, despite all three having the same 8 team double elimination format?

The loser of Upper Final goes to Lower Final, not Lower Round 3, so if they win both games tomorrow they are guaranteed to be in the top 3.

Aside from Envy, these teams are all just listed according to their placement in S3 Challengers, although I guess you could also arbitrarily swap T1 and Gen.G in that case.

NA really do be wild, but as long as Acend wins their grand final there will be one person with a perfect EU bracket, since there are two people left after the first 12 matches and they predicted different winners for G2 v GUILD.

There are female-only tournaments in Chess as well, despite the fact that there are no male-only tournaments. They don’t do it because of some huge skill gap between men and women, it’s just a consequence of certain activities having a much higher male population. When I was a freshman in high school and our robotics program was started, most of the girls decided to form their own team simply because they felt more comfortable that way and engineering fields have historically been difficult for women (after a couple years the teams became much more balanced, but the point remains). Anyway, I may have gotten a bit side-tracked, but you should think of female-only tournaments being created as a way of encouraging women to get into competitive gaming, rather than it being used as a skill barrier like you’d see in traditional sports where physical ability is more impactful.

V1 averaged 12.2 rounds over 10 maps, 5 of which they lost. Honestly incredible.

Some aggregate statistics from the 37 pick'ems that have been commented so far (may update later):

In the first match for each team:

• 36/37 expect FNC to win against KRU.
• 31/37 expect V1 to win against CR.
• 14/37 expect SEN to win against FNC/KRU.
• 36/37 expect VKS to win against X10.
• 36/37 expect TL to win against V1/CR.
• 26/37 expect NU to win against Sharks.

In the Grand Final:

• SEN appears 23 times, winning 11.
• TL appears 22 times, winning 12.
• FNC appears 16 times, winning 8.
• VKS appears 10 times, winning 5.
• NU appears 3 times, winning 1.