PGL announce important rule change for Americas RMR
In the aftermath of FURIA Esports CEO Jaime Padua and Complexity CS:GO Manager Graham "Messioso" Pitt taking to Twitter to discuss the issues of the RMR, PGL has announced there will be tiebreakers for the 3-2 teams. The ruling does not change the fact that the Buchholz system will still determine who makes Legend status out of the 3-0 teams.
The new ruling means that 3-2 teams will no longer have their major hopes riding on the quality of their opponents played and their initial seeding. Instead, there will now be two extra BO3s, that will take place on Friday 15th of April.
For those who are unaware of the Buchholz system, it works by rating the quality of teams that you have played against each round, resulting in a score that then is used to determine the next matchups and ranking. It was first designed in 1932 by Bruno Buchholz and was first introduced in the 2018 FACEIT London Major. Many people are critical of the system saying that it rewards the lower-seeded teams for just playing against higher seeded teams.
Many have continued to criticize PGL as this new ruling does not address the 3-0 teams, meaning that one of them will advance instantly to the top 16, whereas any other 3-0 team will have to fight their way through the top 24. Hypothetically, if all favorites go undefeated then Complexity would take the legend spot over Furia. Although these changes are definitely positive, they do not address the big issue of the Legend spot.
It will interesting to see if PGL continues to make any adjustments based on community feedback. Important to note, Valve themselves has implemented the use of the Swiss system for the RMR events, so it is not PGL's call to make regarding the format of the tournament. However, PGL has added these tiebreakers, so the precedent is set for them to add more matches if need be. PGL needs to get approval from Valve for any format changes, including these tiebreakers. They could request another tiebreaker for the 3-0 teams to determine the Legend status, but Valve would need to authorize it.
