ESEA Pre-Season Circuit playoffs start later today

After a month of open qualifiers, the ESEA Pre-Season Circuit has finally reached the playoffs stage. The sixteen teams have been seeded into the bracket with matches set to kick-off this evening at 04:00PM in BO1 format.

With some qualifiers being stacked, featuring the likes of M80 and Reason, and others not so much, the competition for the $20,000 prize pool is a mixed bag of ECL and Advanced teams and players. Unfortunately, the two of the higher calibre teams have also withdraw from the playoffs. After making it out of the first open qualifier, Rugratz slowly lost their players to other teams who played in further open qualifiers.

And at some point since last night, Party Astronauts also withdrew from the competition, after the bracket was initially seeded. After a request for comment from the team, Dust2.us has learnt that the team had to withdraw due to being unable to use their new fifth in place of temporary stand-in Silas "silas" Marrufo, with who they qualified, due to the restrictions on roster additions in the rules.

With Detonate and Tempest coming in as the replacement teams for the two departures, the new bracket has been seeded and published. The top seeded teams appear to be M80 and Wildcard, who both recently qualified to the $500,000 Thunderpick World Championship in Europe, later this year.

The bracket will play out today and tomorrow, in a single-elimination format, with all matches except the grand final being played as BO1 series. The teams falling at the semifinals stage will net themselves $2,500, whilst the winners of the BO3 grand final will claim the top prize of $10,000, with $5,000 going to second place.

The full list of opening matches is:

• M80 vs Tempest

• Forsaken vs Melly Madness

• FLUFFY AIMERS vs Detonate

• the jungle vs Reason

• Wildcard vs Green Tea Party

• PNEUMA vs Hound

• timbermen vs Bad News Bears

• LFO vs OMiT

The second round of matches are schedule to be played immediately after the first round is finished today, with semifinals and the grand final set for tomorrow starting at 06:00PM.