With 2 weeks to go in VCT Americas I thought I'd make a post about some of the possible playoff scenarios for each team. Tiebreakers according to Liquipedia are H2H, in the case of multi-way ties where there is no H2H advantage (ex: a 3-way tie with all teams being 1-1 against each other) it then moves to map differential, then round differential, then finally a Bo1 tiebreaker. Since tiebreakers could end up being extremely complicated, I can't go through every single one, but I'll give a rundown of what each team needs to do + the help they might need.
IF YOU AIN'T READING ALLAT SKIP TO THE TL;DR AT THE END I'LL SAY EACH TEAM'S OUTLOOK
LOUD:
LOUD has clinched a first round bye.
Cloud9:
C9 has clinched a playoff spot, and clinches a first round bye with any of the following results:
C9 win vs. LEV
C9 win vs. KRÜ
LOUD win vs. LEV
(if none of the above happen, C9 would lose a 2-way H2H tiebreaker against LEV, but C9 could still possibly win a 3 or 4-way tiebreaker with LEV + NRG and/or FUR if they win both of their last 2 matches to create a 3 or 4 way tie at 6-3. the reason a LOUD win vs. LEV clinches C9 the bye is because C9 would automatically win a 2-way or 3-way tiebreak against NRG and/or FUR due to having wins against both teams)
Sentinels:
SEN will be eliminated with a loss to either KRÜ or FUR, since either result will put their ceiling at 3-6, and one of EG, 100T, or MIBR is guaranteed to become the 6th team to achieve at least 4 wins.
With 2 wins to finish their schedule, SEN has a chance to qualify for playoffs. One possible result is the following: EG and 100T both lose their last 2 games, and LEV wins 1 of their last 2 games, pushing 5 teams to 5 or more wins and creating a 2-way tie for 6th place between SEN and MIBR at 4-5. In this scenario, SEN would win the 2-way tiebreaker due to their H2H win vs. MIBR.
MIBR:
MIBR will be eliminated with a loss to either EG or 100T, since either result will put their ceiling at 3-6 and push a 6th team to 4 or more wins.
However, with wins against both teams, MIBR does have a chance to qualify, possibly without even needing to rely on a tiebreaker.
Example: Assuming MIBR wins vs. EG and 100T, then if both of those teams lose their other match (EG vs. NRG and 100T vs. FUR), and SEN loses at least one of their last two matches (vs. KRÜ, FUR), then MIBR will sit at 4-5 with EG, 100T, SEN, and KRU all sitting at 3-6 or worse, which would allow MIBR into the playoffs regardless of what happens with the other 5 teams.
If the above does not happen, MIBR will have to rely on tiebreakers that will likely involve multiple teams sitting at 4-5. However, depending on the other teams in the tiebreakers, MIBR would have wins against NRG, 100T, and EG, and considering that the tiebreaks would likely include 100T and/or EG, this could give them a possible H2H advantage that pushes them through to the playoffs without having to rely on map differential, since MIBR would automatically win a 2-way tiebreak against any of those teams, as well as a 3 or even 4-way tiebreak including only those teams.
KRÜ Esports:
KRÜ has been eliminated from playoff contention.
With the remaining 5 teams sitting at either 4-3 or 3-4, playoff scenarios get extremely complicated.
For both 100T and EG, both teams MUST win at least 1 game to have a chance for playoffs. Losing both will put either team at 3-6, and in that scenario either MIBR or the other of the 2 teams will reach 4 wins. A final record of 4-5 will give both teams a chance for playoffs, but they will need lots of help. Winning both games will lead to a very high probability of making playoffs, although there is one possible scenario that could spoil this.
For LEV, NRG, and FUR, all 3 teams can clinch playoff spots by winning both of their last two matches, and will likely make the playoffs with even 1 win. However, as I alluded to before, there is a scenario where a 5-4 team does NOT make playoffs (this could happen to any team except NRG). Here's the crazy scenario.
If the following happens:
100T win vs. FUR
EG win vs. MIBR
NRG win vs. LOUD
FUR win vs. SEN
EG win vs. NRG
100T win vs. MIBR
LEV wins 1 out of 2 matches vs. LOUD and C9
Then there will be a 5-way tie for 3rd-7th place between 100T, EG, NRG, FUR, and LEV, all sitting at 5-4. If ANY of the above results does not happen (except LEV winning both matches, which would still create a 4 way tie between 4th-7th place) then a 5-4 record will be sufficient to clinch a playoff birth. However, if the above scenario happens, there is a very complicated tiebreak process.
If they go by H2H records among the 5 teams, which Liquipedia seems to imply would happen, then 100T would have a 3-1 H2H record, LEV would have a 1-3 H2H record, and the other 3 teams would all have 2-2 H2H records, which would seemingly leave LEV on the outside looking in. If they go by map differential, then NRG and LEV would be guaranteed playoff spots, whereas the other 2 spots would be dependent on the scores of the last 2 weeks (100T would end with a map differential between -1 and +1, EG and FUR would both end with map differentials between 0 and 2).
If LEV wins both of their last matches, creating a 4-way tie for 4th-7th place, then NRG and 100T would have 2-1 H2H records while EG and FUR would have 1-2 H2H records. It is unclear if this would advance NRG and 100T and lead to a separate tiebreaker between EG and FUR (a 2-way H2H tiebreaker would give FUR the spot, a map differential tiebreaker could give the spot to either team), or if we would simply go to a 4-way map differential tiebreaker. A 4-way map differential tiebreaker would lead to the same result as the 5-way tiebreaker, where NRG would get a guaranteed spot and the other 2 spots would be dependent on the scores of the last 2 weeks.
TL;DR FOR THOSE WHO AIN'T READING ALLAT (SKIP TO THE TEAM YOU CARE ABOUT):
Here's your team's outlook ranked from most to least likely to qualify:
LOUD guaranteed playoffs and first-round bye
C9 guaranteed playoffs, gets first-round bye with a win or a LEV loss, maybe with some weird scenario with C9, LEV and FUR and/or NRG tied at 6-3
NRG guaranteed playoffs with a win, can still qualify with 0 wins and help
FUR and LEV guaranteed playoffs with 2 wins, extremely likely to qualify with 1 win and can still qualify with 0 wins and help
100T and EG extremely likely to qualify with 2 wins, can still qualify with 1 win and help, but eliminated with 0 wins
SEN and MIBR must get 2 wins to qualify and still need help, SEN likely needs more help than MIBR (since MIBR has yet to play 2 of the teams they would have to beat out for the last playoff spot and MIBR can technically qualify without needing tiebreaks)
KRÜ eliminated
It's notable that LEV has the toughest remaining schedule of all teams (vs. LOUD, C9) and could end up in trouble despite having a good outlook
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