Spring Major AI Predictions and Worlds Qualifications

If you need more information on what the numbers in this chart mean, check out the FAQ here.

Let's go over some of the more controversial picks.

NA > SSG???

Spacestation have been very consistent and very good this split. While many people are doubting that they can win the Major, surely they can't be the lowest rated team from NA while being the first seed? I don't blame you if you think this is odd. After all, they clearly outdid Optic every tournament after the first regional.

SSG came into the split as the lowest rated out of all the teams that ended up making the major. They've been on a steady increase, but unfortunately they've not won a single tournament. This makes a huge difference in double elimination. The difference between going 4-2 and 5-0 is just 1 win, but the series differentials are +2 and +5. Additionally, the other team that hasn't won anything (Optic) also went 4-2. They just did it through the lower bracket. They also beat FaZe, the highest rated NA team at the time, in the run. I'm not saying this to defend SSG's rating, but rather to explain the quirks of ignoring the bracket like the AI does. I personally agree that SSG are likely being underrated a bit.

Lastly, I want to make it very clear that SSG's rating is so close to Optic's, Complexity's, and even GenG's, that you can more or less consider the teams tied. As a matter of fact, once you take a look at the simulated odds, you will find that SSG is NA's second best hope. The tiny differences in rating matter less than the superior seeding that SSG rightfully earned.

Liquid underrated

You do get ranked on your average performance, and Liquid have gone out in top 8 and also lost to Hogan Mode. They certainly have a great peak and a realistic chance of winning the entire Major, but haven't matched the consistency of the Top 3 in Europe.

Liquid have won The Draw and are now highly rated.

Minor regions underrated

I'll probably reiterate this until the end of my life, as everyone loves to throw 1-3 minor region teams into their top 10 rankings because minor regions get top 8's. There are ten teams from EU and NA and six from minor regions. Expecting all major region teams to outperform all minor region teams is like trying to roll ten dice and not a single roll is allowed to be a 1. That's supposed to represent an EU/NA team significantly underperforming. Meanwhile, you also roll six other dice, and if even one of them is a 6, that's a minor region team overperforming. When the overperformance happens, that is not luck. It is hard-fought and earned. When Sunless wins 3 out of 100 matches against Musty, that's not luck. Trying to predict the exact match in which the upset happens is, at least in part, luck.

The ratings pretty accurately match the rate at which these upsets have happened. And yes, I would classify them all as upsets. I would never predict all EU or NA teams to do better than the best SAM team for any LAN. But I will stand by the prediction that every EU/NA team individually (excluding Dignitas last LAN) has a better chance than every SAM team individually.

They are still fairly close though. In a Moist vs. KRÜ match, the AI expects one win from KRÜ for every two that Moist can get.

I'm always very interested to hear everyone's thoughts on the player rankings. LAN buffs are not included.

Vatira falling off?

Not at all. He's actually very high rated. As far as I know, Firstkiller and zen are the only players to ever reach 2700 and Vitality as a team has the highest rating of all time. Granted, there is a bit of inflation in the system over time, but that's impressive regardless. It's certainly debatable whether MonkeyMoon or Alpha54 deserve a spot above Vatira, but it hasn't been his very best split, and the rankings have a strong recency bias.

Liquid players low

Keep in mind that this is not a list of player potentials, but rather a list of recent team performance separated by individual player contribution to that performance. The Liquid players are phenomenal, but the spots are very limited. With the team's overall split, they barely miss out on top 10.

Kiileerrz > Rw9

Everyone seems to rank Rw9 above his twin brother, but how many of y'all have watched a lot of MENA? I feel like Kiileerrz gets a lot less credit just because Rw9 is better at 1s and 2s. If Vatira lost to ExoTiiK or itachi in a 1v1, no one would ever take that into consideration to estimate how good Vatira is at 3s. Kiileerrz is not just Rw9 but with worse defense. Kiileerrz has a 3v3 playstyle and is a super threatening ballchaser. When you give him the ball, there is a much higher likelihood that Rule One score afterwards. Does that make him better than his brother overall? That's very debatable, but I am convinced that he's better at some (very important) things and worse at others. I also expect that many fans will rank Kiileerrz higher after watching Rule One against the international competition.

This table is the result of 1,000,000 tournaments simulated, each with 30-31 series. For a total of over 30 million series sampled from the AI probabilities.

Vitality take more than half the simulations home which is a ridiculous amount. But we've also never had a threepeat. They also did it while EU has looked on the up. FURIA is NA's best hope, but they're still sitting at a meager 6%5%.

Once again, we can see the bracket at play in several areas. Karmine Corp was smart enough to throw against Hogan Mode and secure the 3rd seed. This gives them much better odds than BDS for the entire tournament simply because they have a fairly straight forward path to top 3. Sure, they will still need to beat the best of NA to make it there, but they also get a game against OCE while BDS' warmup is GenG.

Of course this is no better for GenG. Complexity and Liquid are the other two teams stuck in the same part of the bracket. At least they have the advantage of getting Elevate as their opponents when losing in round 1. But it would be a ridiculous lower bracket grind to make it back from that. The profiteers are SSG and Optic. They have better average odds than teams that are technically listed above them in the power rankings although it's all super tight anyways.

I found an interesting quirk of the bracket when filling out my predictions on pickstop.gg. If you follow the power rankings one by one, GenG and Complexity will run into Optic and SSG. Though extremely close, the rankings would suggest that GenG and Complexity are the correct teams to pick, but from the simulations it follows that this will lead to fewer points on average. For those that have never used Pickstop: You don't get points for predicting the right series but only for correctly guessing how far teams will go in the tournament.

The odds for winning the tournament by region are:
EU - 88.5%, NA - 10.4%, MENA - 1.0%, SAM - 0.1%, OCE - 1 in 10k, APAC - 1 in 100k.

Despite what it may look like with the rounded numbers, OCE 2 did make main event 1 4 in a million times. NA 2 and EU 2 could technically still fail to qualify, but they never ever didn't make it in my simulations. EU 5 is just out but NA 5 makes it about 1 out of 30,000 times.

I found it interesting just how locked in 7 of the spots already are. Aside from some major upsets, it's all likely coming down to that 8th spot. EU are the favorites at just about 50%, with NA being closely behind sitting around half of that. MENA do have a decent chance if Rule One make at least a top 6, and even OCE has an outsider, but possible, chance. Those 2 extra points they've gathered make a huge difference. I manually tested what their odds would be like with 16 points, and they dropped all the way down to 2%.

It's looking very dire for some teams that are technically still in it. Merge Esports, The Patriots, and eRa Eternity are all hoping for miracles. For Version1 and Twisted Minds the m word might be too extreme, but they do need upsets and they don't have their fate in their own hands.

PWR and Ground Zero are fighting for the final OCE spot or the 7% 10% chance of both making it. EU and NA are most likely to take the final direct qualification spot and FURIA and Optic are both attending to snag the extra Wildcard spot that that would open up. G1 will be flipping coins at home, hoping that at least 4 EU teams show up like the favorites they're expected to be.

G2, Oxygen, Spacestation, BDS, and Team Secret are all in the area where they are not mathematically locked, but almost certainly going to make it.