A couple of big upsets on the road to The International 2023 made for a surprising playoff bracket.
In what comes as a big surprise, Gaimin Gladiators and Tundra Esports are destined for a lower bracket run at The International 2023. The biggest upset came from nouns, who are the NA saviors with their shocking sweep over Tundra Esports.
nouns are the only NA team to have made it to the playoffs upper bracket at TI12 as Shopify Rebellion and TSM fell short in their seeding matches. The International 2023 upper bracket features three Eastern European representatives, both Chinese teams coming to the most important tournament of the year, a SEA team, one from NA and in what is truly surprising, just one Western European team.
nouns pull the biggest upset of TI12 group stage
After they completely dominated the entire competitive year, Gaimin Gladiators were sent to the lower bracket at TI12 by Talon Esports, the sole SEA survivor in the group stage.
However, an even bigger upset was noun’s clean sweep over the defending champions, Tundra Esports. The latter finished first in their group and picked nouns, who finished third in Group C, for the playoff seeding match.
nouns took Tundra by surprise with a core Witch Doctor for David "Moo" Hull in game one and a mid lane Ogre Magi in game two. Both picks proved to be crucial in their strategy and were unanswered by Tundra who would now have to make a full lower bracket run in order to defend their title.
TI12 playoffs bracket
TI12 heads now to a four-day break and will resume on Saturday, October 20 with the the first three upper bracket quarterfinal series. The first round of upper bracket matches and the first two rounds in the lower bracket will be played in front of a live audience at the Seattle Convention Center’s Summit.
Moving into the last weekend of October, The International 2023 main event will unfold from the Climate Pledge Arena, formerly known as Key Arena.
