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.