messioso: "It's absurd that top 16 vs top 24 at the Major is decided essentially randomly"

FURIA Esports CEO Jaime Padua took to twitter this afternoon criticizing Valve's Buchholz tie-breaking methodology and the lack of a decider match to determine who is awarded the Legend Spot for a team that goes undefeated in the swiss stage at the Americas RMR. In a series of tweets, Mr. Padua explained that due to the current rules, not only was there no decider match for the Legend spot, two of the teams that finish with a 3-2 swiss score will not make it through the Major based on the performance of the teams they played and their initial seeding.

For the uninitiated, the Buchholz system was designed by Bruno Buchholz in 1932 as an auxiliary scoring method, but has since been adapted as a tie-breaking system. This system was first introduced during the FACEIT Major in London back in 2018 and was again used at the PGL Stockholm Major last year. Critics of the system have argued that it is inherently flawed by rewarding the lower-seeded teams for nothing other than playing the higher-seeds in the event.

The Buchholz system works by rating the quality of opponent played through each round, accounting for the opponent performance in the event, resulting in a score that then is used to determine the next matchups and ranking.

It is now coming under such public criticism due to the affect it has on qualification at the upcoming AM and EU RMRs. As stated before, there is only one Legends seed up for grabs in the Major from the Americas RMR which means that two teams can go 3-0, but only one will earn it. The two teams that make it through the event undefeated will be sorted just by the strength of their opponents, and their initial seed if need be, and will not be able to compete against one another for that coveted spot.

In turn, this can be a criticism of the Swiss format being used in this event with an unequal amount of qualification places available. As Mr. Padua also stated, there will be two 3-2 teams that will not be able to qualify to the Major, with only one 3-2 team being able to. Hypothetically, should every higher-seeded team win their matchup in the Americas RMR, Complexity will finish first, FURIA second, and teams like Liquid and 00 Nation would finish 7th and 8th, respectively, failing to qualify.

Complexity CS:GO Manager Graham "Messioso" Pitt also shared his thoughts on the qualification and highlighted issues with the seeding. He stated "it's absurd to us that top 16 vs top 24 at the Major is decided essentially randomly - especially with awful seeding." According to the PGL Rulebook, the seedings are determined by a team's final placement in the RMR open qualifiers. The teams that qualified in 1st place in each open qualifier will be ranked higher than teams that finished in 2nd place. For example, Liquid qualified by placing 2nd in the first qualifier, but will be ranked lower than Party Astronauts who placed 1st in the second qualifier. Party Astronauts were forced to play the second qualifier after being eliminated from the first in 17th-32nd place.