Image via Ubisoft
As the playoffs progress here we will collate all the most notable game statistics, player milestones, and team records hit during the tournament.
Sunday
1st anniversary for DWG KIA
One year ago today the DAMWON KIA core roster came together for a tier-four open qualifier only to make APAC North a month later, be the best performing APAC roster six months later, and finish in top ten at the Six Invitational a year later.
Jinwook "Woogiman" Park, SungJoon "coted" Jo, and Byeonguk "RIN" Jang (then known as YulLin) was announced as part of the Spear Gaming roster on February 20th, 2021, ahead of the Korean Trial open qualifiers -- the feeder league into the Korean Open nationals -- a week later.
This core roster won the Korean Trial tournament and then was picked up by the DAMWON organization for the APAC North league on March 7th. Since then they've been one of the most successful and consistent teams of the 2021 Season making this one of the quickest rises of any team in R6 esports history.
Saturday
22:08 -- Team Empire & BULLET1 could complete the triple tomorrow
So far only five players have won a Six Invitational, Six Major, and Pro League title; Pengu, Fabian, Goga, Kanto, and Joonas. Tomorrow these five could be joined by either JoyStiCK, Scyther, ShepparD, and dan from Team Empire who won Season 9 and the Raleigh Major, or Bullet from FaZe who won Season 7 and the Sweden Major.
Furthermore, a win by either of these teams would make them the second most successful R6 roster of all time by titles as the only team to win multiple major tournaments other than the G2 dynasty.
Currently in second place is the ex-Evil Geniuses roster which won Season 3 and SI 2017. The roster also finished runners-up during SI 2018, the Paris Major, Season 9, and DreamHack Austin.
21:17 -- MIBR's Brazilian dominance
Out of the nine games played by MIBR at the 2022 Six Invitational, four have been against LATAM opposition. Across these four games, MIBR is 7-1 up in maps with just one more against FaZe yet to go.
In contrast, MIBR has a 0-2 map record against both Europe and APAC while against North America they beat SSG in an 8-7 result on map three, and went 4-1 against OxG, a roster which also includes a Brazilian member. With such a strong record against Brazil compared to EU and NA this means they may struggle if they hope to take the title ahead of Empire and TSM.
17:17 -- Empire's back
Empire's win over TSM means they will return to the SIx Invitational grand-final stage after three years with their prior performance seeing them lose 3-0 to G2 Esports at SI 2019.
Back at SI19 Troy "Canadian" Jaroslawski and Emilio "Geometrics" Leynez were still on Evil Geniuses, the golden G2 roster was still fully together, Léo "Alphama" Robine was still playing in Europe, Jessica "Jess" Bolden was coaching PENTA, and the regional icons of Yudai "Wokka" Ichise and Leo "ziGueira" Duarte were still competing.
A three-year gap between SI grand-finals has only ever been done by Canadian previously making Artur "ShepparD" Ipatov, Danil "JoyStiCK" Gabov, and Dmitry "Scyther" Semenov the second to fourth players to do so.
15:25 -- 7/13 wins on Kafe in the last year by Empire
Empire has played Kafe 13 times at a professional-tier level over the last year, winning seven time. These wins come against SSG twice, CAG, Secret, V.p, NAVI, and NiP while their losses came against V.p, cowana, Liquid, and BDS three times.
TSM, meanwhile, has played Kafe 10 times, beating BDS, FURIA, beastcoast, and Parabellum twice while losing against Elevate, SSG, DZ, iG, and OxG.
Friday
23:00 -- AsK and resetz become SI 2022's top-performing debutants
Out of the 11 players making their global debut at SI 2022, the Liquid duo of Pablo "resetz" Oliveira and Gabriel "AsK" Santos did the best with a join-fifth place exit at their first event. A full rundown on these 11 players can be found here.
As for players at their first Six Invitational event, AsK and resetz tied in top six with four Soniqs' players, Pablo "Gryxr" Rebeil, Evan "Kanzen" Bushore, Richie "Rexen" Coronado, and Alexander "Yeti" Lawson.
17:11 -- MIBR becomes sixth team to achieve back-to-back top-four SI finishes
MIBR's victory over Team Liquid means the Brazilian roster has locked in a top-four finish at SI 2022 alongside TSM FTX, Team Empire, and either FaZe Clan or the Soniqs. This follows on from a third place exit at SI 2021 making them just the sixth team to achieve back-to-back top-four Six Invitational finishes.
The only other teams to also achieve this is Evil Geniuses at SI17 and SI18, G2 Esports at SI18 and SI19, NiP at SI20 and SI21, TSM at SI20, SI21 and SI22, and Empire at SI19 and SI22. Notably, MIBR, TSM, and Empire are the only ones on this list to have not won a Six Invitational title yet and all three of them are in SI22's final five teams.
16:08 -- nesk achieves an all-time lowest personal rating
During their 0-2 defeat against MIBR to exit the 2022 Six Invitational, Team Liquid's André "nesk" Oliveira achieved a SiegeGG Rating of 0.45, the lowest in his career. Prior to this game, this record was set at 0.54 against W7M Gaming during the 2021 BR6 League.
Wednesday
18:27 -- MIBR knocks-out three rosters with SI champions in a row
With their 2-0 victory over Oxygen today, MIBR has now beaten three rosters in a row with SI-winning players. This includes wins yesterday over NiP and SSG -- the SI 2021 and 2020 champions -- while Oxygen includes the SI 2017 champion, Gabriel "LaXInG" Mirelez.
Next up MIBR plays Team Liquid which includes two Pro League victors and the two statistically best fraggers in R6 history. Following this, they could meet the reigning Major champions of FaZe or the two-time SI champion of DarkZero's Canadian meaning they could continue this remarkable lower-bracket streak.
18:23 -- EU & NA guaranteed a championship Sunday appearance
With Team Liquid and TSM FTX both in the winners' final, both teams are guaranteed to be playing on Sunday during either the grand-final, losers' final, or both.
LATAM meanwhile is guaranteed a team in the lower bracket semi-finals meaning a win in that game could lead the three regions each to be represented in the final three. This would be the best-case scenario for the tournament's viewer numbers.
The last time the top-three teams came from three regions was at SI 2019 which included the same Empire roster.
16:07 -- SI 2022 is the closest Invitational so far
So far 25.5% of all maps at this Six Invitational have gone to overtime. This is the most of any Invitational. This can obviously still change as the event unfolds.
Going back across the five prior events in order this has been the overtime rates; 22.0%, 14.5%, 24.3%, 22.2%, and 21.4%.
13:03 -- A Liquid lower-bracket run would be unprecedented
Across over 200 checked prior tournaments which had a lower-bracket system, the losers' bracket team has only won in around eight percent of occasions regardless of whether a map advantage is given. TSM at the November Regional Major, BDS at the August Regional Major, forZe at the Raleigh EU qualifier, and BDS at the SI 2020 EU qualifier were the most notable cases.
It has never happened at a global tournament.
12:56 -- Gryxr to pass 200 kills at SI 2022 while Empire players nears 100
In the upcoming upper-bracket semi-final between Soniqs and Team Empire, Pablo "Gryxr" Rebeil is set to become the first player at the tournament to break the 200 kill milestone as he currently sits with 181 kills.
Meanwhile, four members of Empire sit just below the 100 kill mark with Danil "JoyStiCK" Gabov on 99. This massive difference is as Soniqs has played three more maps than Empire and Gryxr has by far the highest kills-per-round rate in the tournament at 1.10.
14:03 -- Gryxr passed 200 with his first kill in the final round of map one against Empire.
12:30 -- TSM becomes first team to ever reach top-4 at three SIs in a row
With a win over Team Liquid today, TSM FTX has guaranteed a top-four finish at the 2022 Six Invitational. This follows from their fourth-place exit at SI 2021 and third-place finish at SI 2020. This makes them the very first team to ever secure back-to-back-to-back top-four finishes at the Six Invitational with G2, EG, and NiP only securing two each.
Tuesday
23:07 -- No Ash-mains at SI 2022
Not a single one of the 101 competitors at the 2022 Six Invitational has been an Ash-main as the operator drops out of the top-20 most popular attackers when looking at pick and ban rate. Meanwhile, LuKid has been primarily playing Oryx on the defense and Nokk sits as the 17th most present attacker.
This is a continuation of the complete fall-off as Ash as a viable operator with players opting to bring Zofia, Iana, Finka, or Flores instead. At SI 2021 Ash was the second most "present" operator behind just Jager.
22:57 -- NA's really good at planting
The top four planters during the 2022 Six Invitational so far have been Skys, Ecl9pse, supr, and Geo on 29, 22, 21, and 18 respectively, each of which plays for different North American teams. The fifth NA roster, Oxygen, sees their plant counts split between FoxA and Yoggah with them totaling 24 plants between them. For comparison, FaZe is the only remaining team with over 20 plants across the whole team.
17:03 -- 11/18 three map games have seen teams lose their map picks
So far the Six Invitational has seen 18 maps go all the way to map three, of which 11 had each team lose their own map pick. While this was almost even during the group stage with seven of 13 games unfolding as so, the playoffs have seen four out of five games end with flipped map victories.
Additionally, two-thirds of games have ended in clean 2-0 victories also -- 34 out of 52 or 65% -- while a further seven out of the 18 three-map series have ended with the winner of map one taking the series win. Together this means the winner of map one has won the series in around 79% of games so far at SI 2022.
In the 11 games where this hasn't been the case, NAVI has lost out three times, Elevate and CAG twice each, and once each for OxG, DZ, FaZe, and sQ.
16:55 -- EU has 1 team remaining, APAC's on 2
With MNM, Rogue, and NAVI all exiting in Lower Round 1, Empire is the last remaining European roster at the Six Invitational. APAC meanwhile has both the North and South divisions represented with DWG and Elevate still competing.
16:26 -- Elevate's Onigiri ties single-map kill-record, most ever at SI
Elevate's Paramin "sprOnigiri" Suwanwattana has tied Paluh's world record for 27 kills in a single map to eliminate Rogue from the Six Invitational. With Paluh's 27 coming during the OGA Pit Minor against BDS, this also means sprOnigiri secured the most kills in a single map at a major tournament to date.
13:59 -- Canadian close to tie worst SI performance to date
With DarkZero losing their own map pick against NAVI, Troy "Canadian" Jaroslawski is close to exiting the Six Invitational. A top 14 place finish would mark the second-SI running Canadian has achieved this result with him being a last-second stand-in at SI 2021.
A loss here would also make NAVI just the second EU team to beat Canadian in a best-of-three at SI. The last time was SI 2018's infamous reverse sweep.
16:45 -- DZ reversed the series to take down NAVI. They play FURIA later today.
12:30 -- MIBR came into NiP game with positive head-to-head
Despite having an awful year, MIBR had won 56 rounds against NiP prior to today's game compared NiP's 55 over the last year. Since losing to NiP 3-7 on Kafe, MIBR had banned the map out in every meeting only to pick it here and win 7-3 themselves.
NiP's Lower Round 1 exit marks the team's worst performance since muzi and pino joined the team, with these being the roster's two top-performing players through SI 2022. The worst performer was julio who is also NiP's oldest player by four years as he turns 28 years old in May. This makes him LATAM's third-oldest professional player behind psk1, and cameram4n.
7 out of 8 six-time SI players facing knock-out today
There are currently eight competitors who have attended every single Six Invitational. FaZe's cameram4n and Astro, Spacestation's Skys and Bosco, DarkZero's Ecl9pse and Canadian, and Oxygen's LaXInG all hold this distinction and will be fighting in the losers' bracket of SI 2022 today, each on separate sides of the bracket.
The eighth name is Liquid's longtime coach, Adenauer "Silence" Alvarenga, who after competing on Santos Dexterity at the 2017 Six Invitational, coached FaZe at SI 2018 and Liquid since. Liquid sits in the upper bracket semi-finals and will play TSM on Wednesday.
Today 8 of the remaining 16 teams go home
Currently, two North American, one Latin American, and one European team has already locked in a top-eight finish at SI 2022. By the end of today, four more teams will join them.
Should these four be the top teams based on group stage performance -- DWG, SSG, FURIA, and Elevate -- this will create a 3-3-1-1 NA-LATAM-EU-APAC split for the top eight.
For APAC this will be the first time the region has hit the top-eight at the Six Invitational without the Fnatic roster present. For EU, this will be an all-time low with the last three Six Invitationals each seeing two rosters reach this point. Three rosters tie NA's best at SI 2019 and 2020. Finally, LATAM has seen its team count hit two, one, two and then four meaning three is at least on the top side of the count.
Monday
22:29 -- Gryxr overtakes nesk as SI 2022's top-rated player following tournament's 5th highest KPR vs DWG
Soniqs' Pablo "Gryxr" Rebeil's 1.25 kill-per-round count against DWG KIA is the fifth-highest KPR we've seen across the 47 games played so far. Ahead of Gryxr was dan at 1.30 against NiP and JoyStiCK, Solotov, and Gryxr again all against SANDBOX, 1.50, 1.26, and 1.29 respectively.
This performance has meant the American has overtaken the Brazilian duo of nesk and Paluh as the tournament's top-rated player at 1.36 across 14 maps. Liquid and Soniqs will next be in action on Wednesday against TSM and Empire respectively.
21:00 -- Jersey color, not stats, the true predictor of SSG's success
Out of Spacestation's six series played so far at SI 2022, they have won all four played with their new light jersey while lost the two played with their darker jersey. This includes today where they switched jerseys between their victory over NAVI and defeat to Empire.
19:05 -- nesk on 199 all-time LAN games
On Wednesday, Team Liquid's winner's semi-final against TSM will mark nesk's 200th LAN map, making him the second player to pass this milestone. DarkZero's Canadian was the first player to pass this point earlier at SI 2022.
52 of nesk's LAN maps have come in regional LATAM tournaments while 147 have come in global tournaments meaning he may hit the 150 mark against TSM also. Finally, just over one-quarter -- 50 of the 199 -- have been in the last year.
19:00 -- Astro becomes 5th player to break 1,000 international kills
A kill over AsK on round two of map one against Liquid was Leonardo "Astro" Luis' 1,000th kill in international tournaments. This makes him the fifth player to achieve this alongside Liquid's nesk and Paluh, NiP's Psycho, and DarkZero's Canadian. All five of these except nesk passed the milestone at SI 2022.
A number of other players are set to join them by the end of the Six Invitational with Canadian's ex-teammates, Bosco and Rampy, just 23 and 29 kills short respectively:
17:29 -- Paluh hits 500 all-time entry kills
With a grenade kill over Lucas "soulz1" Schinke during round seven of Liquid's match against FaZe, Luccas "Paluh" Molina has passed 500 opening kills across all tournaments. 161 of these came at international tournaments, 288 came during online LATAM play, and a further 51 came during LATAM LAN games.
This makes Paluh the sixth player to pass this milestone following his teammate, nesk, the NiP duo of Psycho and pino, Cyber from FaZe, and BDS' Shaiiko:
16:34 -- Secretly tops NAVI for the 4th time in 37 games as he hits 1,500 lifetime kills
Across his 37 series played for NAVI, the team's loss vs SSG was just the fourth time Rickard "Secretly" Olofsson has topped the roster by Rating. The prior cases were during their 0-2 loss against OxG earlier at SI 2022, during a 4-7 loss against Virtus.pro during Stage 3, and a 3-7 loss against Secret in Stage 2.
This SSG game saw all five NAVI players achieve between 22 to 25 kills with Secretly beating the others with a 1.03 Rating. Since joining the team in March he has averaged a 0.84 Rating. A kill over Bosco in today's game also marked his 1,500th all-time kill.
15:00 -- Rampy gets first ace of the playoffs
On Sledge during round 13 of map two against NAVI, Nathanial "Rampy" Duvall secured five kills in the space of around 40 seconds to get the first ace of the playoffs.
15:20 - Richie "Rexen" Coronado secured the playoff's second ace just 20 minutes later.
14:14 -- Tachanka's first playoff pick works out, Amaru less so
Amaru's first pick of the playoff stage saw Matthew "Hotancold" Stevens die six seconds after using the Garra Hook gadget while Szymon "Saves" Kamieniak's Tachanka pick in the very same round worked as part of a Smoke/Tachanka/Echo plant denial to win the round. Both operators were sixth picks and likely won't be seen that much through the rest of the tournament.
13:49 -- Elevate is 5-0 in maps vs NA, 1-4 vs everyone else
Despite this being Thailand's first global event, Elevate is currently 5-0 in maps over North American teams with 2-0 wins over DZ and TSM and a win on Soniqs' map pick in the ongoing series. In contrast, Elevate lost 0-2 against FURIA and won just one map versus the bottom-placed BDS roster.
15:00 - Soniqs went on to win map two, ending the streak.
12:11 -- Oxygen lost 3-7, 3-7 despite winning 15/20 entry duels
While the unanswered opening kills are usually a very strong indicator of who will win the round, Oxygen dominated this statistic and yet still lost to FaZe in a fairly one-sided result. Five of the six rounds Oxygen won began with an opening kill.
Check back here for more updates as the playoffs wear on.