ESEA Pre-Season Circuit playoffs reach semifinals
Yesterday evening the first two rounds of the ESEA Pre-Season Circuit playoffs were played out, leaving us with the top four teams playing for the lion's share of $20,000. Unfortunately, the day did not go without issue, although not at the players' fault.
As mentioned yesterday, Party Astronauts were forced to withdraw from the event due to the strict roster restrictions despite this being an off-season event. As the bracket was set to commence, yet another team was unable to compete. Melly Madness forfeit their opening match versus Forsaken due to being unable to present their original qualifying lineup in full. In the second round of play, the same fate met LFO who were unable to a second substitute after already being down one player in the first round.
Further issues arose when players realized they had played a month's worth of qualifiers to get into the playoffs, just for them to also be BO1 matches with there having been no benefit in being able to pass through the gruelling format in the qualifiers. Among the notable outspoken players pointing out the issue with the format were Joshua "steel" Nissan and Danny "cxzi" Strzelczyk.
In the opening round most matches went to their expected winners with two results that could be considered upsets. Replacement squad Detonate were able to swiftly dismiss FLUFFY AIMERS in their opening BO1 with a 16-7 win on Vertigo, and the aforementioned steel's squad Bad News Bears played a close match with timbermen on Mirage. The 16-13 win could have easily gone a different way had the series been a BO3.
The opening match results are:
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M80 16-2 Tempest -
Forsaken W-FF Melly Madness
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FLUFFY AIMERS 7-16 Detonate
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the jungle 9-16 
Reason -
Wildcard 16-5 Green Tea Party
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PNEUMA 16-8 Hound
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timbermen 13-16 Bad News Bears
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LFO 16-8 OMiT
In the second round, other than the forfeit win for BNB, every other match ended with also a 16-13 scoreline. Here two of the three results could certainly be considered upsets with favorites M80 falling to cxzi's Forsaken and Detonate taking yet another head, this time in the form of Reason. Had the matches been BO3s, we could have seen teams forced to dig deep into their map pools to prove who really is the better team.
The second round match results are:
The semifinals are set for later today starting at 06:00PM, with the grand final finally being played as a BO3 scheduled to begin straight after, tentatively at 07:15PM. The semifinal matches are:
The winning team will take home the largest share of the prize pool, $10,000, with $5,000 going to the runners-up. Those who fall in the BO1 semifinals first will also take home $2,500 for their troubles.
