How Furia suffer from their success in the RMR

As the Major cycle is about to kick off with the Americas RMR next week, a new series of problems with a Major hosted by PGL have started surfacing.

It all started with the announcement of the new format. An RMR event would be replacing the old Minor system, with open qualifiers having to be planned on short notice.

But PGL dropped the ball on the qualifiers, as they scheduled most of them during other events. This was especially grievous for the North-American region, as the qualifier was held during Fragadelphie 15, one of the last significant events in the region.

Public outcry from the teams forced PGL to change their schedule several times, but eventually, they made it right.

The qualifiers were played, and teams locked in for the studio event in Roumania.

But that’s where even more problems popped up.

The Buchholz disaster

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PGL introduced a seeding system to rank the teams in the RMRs. While a seeding system to determine matchups is a good concept, PGL went further.

See, PGL decided that the seeding system, the Buchholz system, would also decide tiebreakers.

How did this work? Well, PGL decided to add different values to victories. A win against the lowest-seeded team would net you fewer points than one against the top-seeded team.

Teams once again took to Twitter to address the issue. PGL fixed the most prominent issue: it introduced a tiebreaker match for the teams finishing with a 3-2 scoreline, thus improving the qualifying problem for the Major.

But one glaring problem remained: America only has one Legends spot.

This spot will go to one of the three teams with a 3-0 score—the team with the most valuable wins based on the Buchholz seeding.

Furia shot themselves in the foot by being good

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With Furia being the highest seeded team in the region and likely to finish in the 3-0 tiebreaker, they are severely handicapped in the fight.

They start against Leviathan, the lowest-seeded team in the event, and thus close to worthless in the tiebreaker.

They will consistently get the least point for their victories as they face the lowest-rated team they can.

This means that if PGL doesn’t change their system, Furia is not going to the PGL Antwerp Major with Legends status.