VCT Masters Bangkok get an oddly predictable start

The conclusion of day two of Masters Bangkok means that all of the Swiss stage’s first-round matches have been played, and the results have been weirdly consistent. With the tournament comprised of the top two seeds from the four VCT regions, the draw for the first round of Swiss saw first-seeded placed against second-seeded teams.

Seed one dominance

Then as the matches played out a pattern emerged; When we look at our VCT Masters Bangkok favorites, all four first seeds were winners. Not only that, but all of these first-seeds beat their respective second-seed opposition via 2-0 scorelines, appearing to show a clear difference in class on initial viewing.

Round one results

• EDward Gaming (China #1) 2-0 Team Liquid (EMEA #2)
• DRX (Pacific #1) 2-0 Sentinels (Americas #2)
• Team Vitality (EMEA #1) 2-0 T1 (Pacific #2)
• G2 Esports (Americas #1) 2-0 Trace Esports (China #2)

Digging deeper, while first seeds in most scenarios should be favourites — hence their recent Kickoff titles — coincidence has no doubt played a part in the frequency of 2-0 scorelines.

This is perhaps best shown by the tournament’s very first map between Team Liquid and EDward Gaming. A 34-round slog saw an additional 10 rounds required for Champions holders EDG to finally defeat their EMEA opponents on a map that could have very easily gone the other way. So tense and drawn out was the game that it seemed to sap the energy from Liquid who had much less fight in their 13-6 map two loss.

The second series of the tournament also was almost not a 2-0 sweep as, despite a whimpering 13-3 opening map defeat, only three rounds separated Sentinels from DRX in map two of the latter’s victory.

EMEA winners’ Team Vitality earned the closest overall win of the first round with only seven rounds in their favour across the whole series against T1. 13-10 and 13-9 wins showed anything but a gulf of class between the sides in a series that was billed as superteam vs superteam despite the seeding difference.

Only G2’s win over Trace Esports proved to be convincingly one-sided as the Americas winners ran riot with 13-8 and 13-3 wins.

Will the record continue?

While round two of Swiss will not see any inter-seed play, round three may well match up seed ones versus twos again and give this odd pattern a chance to continue.