VCT Bangkok Playoffs Draw sets Eastern and Western only duels

The VALORANT Champions Tours’ first global event of 2025 is down to its last four teams after half of its participants were eliminated in recent days. 

The tournament’s results have mostly followed a pattern of seed ones beating seed twos, leading to regional Kickoff winners occupying three of the final four spots. The first round of swiss precisely followed this pattern with all first seeds claiming 2-0 victories, after which the second round saw some closer results.

Predictable outcomes?

That second round brought with it the first eliminations; Trace Esports knocked out by T1 and last year’s Masters Madrid winners Sentinels eliminated by Team Liquid.

Trace’s LuoK1ng simply put the team’s fate down to their “bad performance” — an inability to reproduce results they’d seen in practice. Sentinels were keen to see the positive in their run, coach kaplan highlighting the players’ “very good job trying to wrangle in terms of morale and emotions” and newcomer N4RRATE revealing that he’d “definitely learned a lot” from the tournament, including figuring out his specific role within the team.

Then round three’s elimination matches again pitted seed ones versus seed twos, and the seed one dominance was repeated in G2’s swift 2-0’ing of Team Liquid as they sent the EMEA side home. Like SEN, TL also showed positivity following their exit with coach LohaN praising his team’s resilience: “I like the will to win that we showed today”.

But that was proceeded by T1 vs DRX, a rematch of the Pacific Kickoff final which, on that occasion, was a 3-2 in DRX’s favour. T1 had other ideas this time, becoming the only second seed to beat a first seed at Bangkok as they stunned DRX with a 2-0 victory. An opening 13-11 on Fracture — DRX’s map picked — signalled that a tight series may have been on the cards, but T1 took complete control in map two to smash their fellow Koreans 2-0.

VCT Bangkok Playoffs Draw pits Eastern and Western duels

Image credit: LiquipediaThe playoffs draw took place immediately after the swiss stage concluded, putting China’s EDward Gaming against Korea’s T1 and EMEA’s Team Vitality against the Americas’ G2 Esports. The three first seeds were the three favorites before the tournament kicked off, but T1’s domination of DRX has suddenly thrown expectations up in the air.