The Other Shock Results

The first week of qualifiers has seen some shocking results that have led to ridiculous calls for changes of format and volume of games*, but they aren't the type of surprise results I want to discuss here. I want to discuss the surprises at the other end of the leader board and what they might mean moving through the rest of the tournament.

I wrote after day 1 about the performance of Entus ACE and how unexpected it was, but I don't think much of the Western audience really understand the enormity of their first week result.

The team finished 17th in PKL Phase 1, 6th in Phase 2 and 11th in Phase 3. They only made it to this event by winning a best of 6 tournament (by just 2 points) to get the final place allotted to the Korean teams. Only 1 of the 4 players on the team (Alphaca) has ever played at a single international event (where his team at the time finished 13th). Add to this the fact that the team is considered the "little brother" of Entus Force and you start to get the picture. The question now is can they replicate the performance? If they can, they are going to have to do it right in front of big brother as the 2 teams have been drawn in the same group for the semi finals, ensuring that they will face each other in all of their games this weekend. Will be interesting to see if they are up to it.

Another team to look at is Vendetta. The lone team remaining from OCE might seem like unknowns to some, but the fact is that half of the team played at last year's huge PGI event under the Chiefs Esports banner. Regardless, their performance so far has caught the eye of plenty of people. For a team that was only formed for Phase 2, they have done a remarkable job. Looking solely at the results from day 1, you would be led to believe that they had a good start and struggled on Miramar, but the reality is that they were safe after 4 top 5 finishes and could enjoy themselves for the last 2 matches. The other thing to consider is the tremendous form that they brought into this tournament. They actually qualified ahead of the more prestigious Athletico squad by winning the only OCE LAN event of the year. In that 20 game tournament they averaged over 10 points per game, finishing in the top 4 in 60% of the matches. I can't see them being overawed by the moment and the lack of pressure on them puts them in a prime position to make it through to the final weekend.

I've already written plenty about both the first round performance as well as the potential of this Ghost roster, so the final team I want to focus on here is VC Gaming. After the first 2 days of this tournament it looked as though the Chinese teams were really struggling with only 1 of the 4 teams automatically qualifying. From there, the 3 remaining Chinese teams all managed to get through the elimination stage, but none were as impressive as VC. Having started the day in 1st position by virtue of accumulating 30 points on day 1, the team seemingly decided that they weren't going to give up that spot. They won the first match of the day and never looked back from there. The 63 points that they amassed in their 6 elimination games equaled the tally of TSM from the previous day to be the highest single day points total of the tournament so far. The quality of the opposition may have been slightly lower than the first 2 days of play, but you can't underestimate how much the desperation of their opposition as well as the pressure of those matches really makes up for the drop in talent. Additionally, it's not like we are talking about a skill drop from the PKL to, say, NPL Contenders. These are all still the world's best teams and the VC result shouldn't be shrugged off. What is really interesting is that VC have been in a massive form slump of late. After winning the Spring PCL, they haven't managed to place higher than 8th in their following 6 tournaments. The question that remains is if they can use this as a springboard back to top level performances or if they will fall back to the pack again. If the performance on Sunday turns out to be a flash in the pan and they get eliminated this weekend, it will likely be more to do with their recent poor form than the quality of the elimination lobby giving false hope.

This weekend’s matches will make or break these promising teams - which will it be?





*For the record, the format is basically perfect and the number of games are spot on in my opinion