I'm not really surprised LC and Purple got dunked in the first round. They both drew really bad in a match. It seems like in all tournaments, you see really good players go out from that.

have to say im disappointed there is no action on draftkings for this

Is Trump in this? I was yootoobing that HTC tourney earlier today where Trump knocked LC out in 5 and went on to win it. Apparently that's the only bracelet Trump has or it was at the time

Trump got knocked out in the na qualifiers

Nope. He got knocked out in the qualifiers by JAB I think.

There are a ton of notable players that didn't make it including Firebat, Trump, Kolento, Xixo, Strifecro. China getting 4 is really stupid.

I don't see why China getting 4 is stupid. There were four regions that sent four. China has a big enough player base by itself. The US could've easily sent four had things swung a different way in qualifiers.

look at the scene, the china scene is by far the weakest.

Imagine a world team club basketball tournament. But each league sent only 4 teams. So China would send 4 teams, the NBA would send 4 teams, Spain would send 4 teams, etc.

Do you think that would be representative of the best basketball teams in the world?

That's what's happening at Blizzcon. Instead of the 16 best players in the world. It's the 4 best players from each region, with no guarantee that the best player from one region is better than the 5th best player from another region.

China gets its own server for political reasons. Only server you cant play if youre not from china. It is absolutely the weakest and also the smallest.

This isn't something specific to Blizzard. Guild Wars 2 had Chinese teams that were behind. They lost. But if you partition off your player base it's kind of silly to deny regions from getting equal representation. And as a single player game the parity of skill isn't so steep that the Chinese players stand no chance.

why does China get a region? Why isn't it included in APAC? I understand it's probably due to server issues but it's silly. I want to see the best players compete, I don't want to see players make it due to silly technicalities. I feel the same way in every sport. I don't care for the division setup in American sports that was created due to travel issues in the past that just don't exist now. the chinese really don't participate in many of the other major HS tourneys--not sure if they don't have good enough players or so other reason but to me it's the equivalent of inviting teams from the minor leagues to play in the major league when there are a number of major league players who are available but can't make it because of some arbitrary regional demarkation. why doesn't the US have it's own server so in the future it can have 4 reps? Americas region has a ton more players in it and that's why it isn't fair--same goes for the EU region.

China segregates its internet from the outside world. That's why.

It's not even specific to eSports.

E.g., the Olympic table tennis teams are limited to two singles competitors per country. Guess how many of the top 5 table tennis players in the world are Chinese? Four, two of whom didn't make the Olympics because the US (and a lot of other countries) had to have 1 or 2 competitors (the highest ranked American is currently #76.)

The fact that this situation occurs throughout the sporting (and e-sporting) world doesn't make it any less fair.

lets be honest, there is basically no difference in skill between the top four chinese players and top four american or european players. were just more familiar with the second group

1st day results (along with timestamp links to the VODs):



Schedule for Thursday:

• Kno v JAB
• Zoro v Nias
• Hotform v Neilyo
• Neirea v DieMeng

Are the losers eliminated in this round?

In this round, there are four groups of four players each. After tomorrow morning, there will be two winners and two losers in each group. The two losers in each group play each other and the loser gets eliminated Thursday evening.

On Friday morning, the two winners in each group play each other. The winner goes on to next week.

On Saturday, the winner of the Thursday afternoon match plays the loser of the Friday morning match to decide the other group member to advance to next weekend.

The round of 8 matches take place next week on Friday the 6th. The semis and finals take place on Saturday the 7th.

Agree. The difference between the best player in the world (lifecoach?) and the ~100th or ~300th (the weakest link of the 16 represented, no idea who it actually is) is legit less than 60/40 and prob closer to 55/45. It just isnt possible to have a higher edge in a bo5.

Didnt watch all the games today but i think name a random top 300 player or whatever in the winning position and they all prob win. The only slightly back and forth game was purples rogue vs chinese druid. And even that wasnt particularly close

The decks people pick (specifically druid and hunter frankly) lend the outcomes to be decided by draws far more than in game decisions.

http://www.gosugamers.net/hearthstone/rankings

I wonder how accurate that actually is

Day 2 underway

Day 2 just started. Kno (Japan) vs. JAB (USA) is the first match.

Match 2 is Zoro (China) vs Nias (USA)

Match 3 is Hotform (Canada) vs Neilyo (Vietnam)

Match 4 is Neirea (Ukraine) vs DieMeng (China)

JAB with hunter as expected

dr. boom vs dr. boom turn was the most interesting of the game but so was jab deciding to go coin-creeper into scientist instead of just playing webspinner then one of the two drops. not sure i like that although obv he has 1000s of more hunter games than me

Why do people think China is the worst region? I've heard they get like 20k people at Legend and have a much more mature tournament scene.

topdick malganis ftw