Fans of competitive Overwatch are having some good weeks, with so many great events happening. Today, the Group Stage of another great event will be played: the Beat Invitational.
Seven American, and one European, teams will be playing in the Beat Invitational. Earlier we reported on the eight teams, but since then Luminosity has had to drop out. A replacement was found in the form of 1Shot. Today's and tomorrow's BO3 matches will not result in any eliminations leading up to the Playoffs, but will be used to seed that bracket instead. The playoffs are scheduled to happen from this Friday, the 1st of July.
Stream: BeatInvitational
Casters: ZP & Hexagrams
Prizepool: $7,500 + Matcherino donations (with code BEAT)
Start time: 15:30 PDT/18:30 EST/00:30 CEST
Bracket:
Group A:
Group B:
Predictions:
1. EnVyUs
Every time EnVyUs plays in a tournament, they should be considered (one of) the favourites. And this has increased even more over the past weekend, where they continued their win streak beating teams such as Cloud9 and Luminsoity convincingly. Even though the competitive landscape is becoming more challenging, EnVyUs might be approaching IDDQD levels of domination soon. This event is stacked with good names however, so it makes for a good proving ground.
2. Cloud9
As these things go, performances of teams go up and down. For a long while, Cloud9 was the best team in the world. But they didn't participate in as many tournaments as their competition, and this seems to have cost them their edge. Still a top tier team, the C9 boys have been having some issues against other top tier teams. EnVyUs is their current biggest nightmare, but matches against teams such as Luminosity and Team Liquid are getting closer and closer.
3. Rogue
Rogue is the only European team in this tournament, which is a bit odd. They will have to play on the NA servers for just about all matches of the tournament, which will provide them with a big handicap. Rogue has also had a shaky couple of weeks, with the loss of iddqd and the recent (temporary?) addition of KnOxx. Their first match is against Cloud9, another shaky team at the moment and so the mental game might have a big impact for the rest of the event.
4. Northern Gaming Red
NG Red is a team that is slowly but steadily improving. That is, if they manage to get all of their players together and prepared for their matches. NG Red's last match actually ended up as a 3-2 victory versus Cloud9, which should give them more than enough confidence to do well in their group. Group A, their group, is arguably the easier of the two. While EnVyUs will most likely win all matches with ease, NG Red should win versus 1SHOT and SPLYCE which will guarantee them an easier round or two in the upcoming playoffs.
How do you feel about the format? Should more tournaments include a round to determine seeding? Let us know in the comments!
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