The biggest tournament in Siege history kicks off in a few hours and the staff here at SiegeGG couldn’t be more excited to watch all the action. With more teams than ever in with a shot of winning the title, we thought we’d get everyone thoughts on how the tournament will go down.
We polled our staff to see everyone's group stage predictions, ranking each team from 1st to 4th in each group, as well as who they thought the eventual winners and runners up would be and found some surprising results:
The Six Invitational predictions made by some of our staff as of last Friday. Full size image can be found here.
As you can see there’s a very large range of results with the predictions across groups A, B and D being pretty much open for grabs, with just group C being a fairly certain deal over who will make it out of the group.
The prediction rate of teams making it out of the group stages.
Group A
Group A predicted Top 2
In what’s pretty much a three-horse race, the reigning Brazilian champions of FaZe Clan are the favourites to make it out of the group stage despite their disappointing Pro League season so far with them down in fifth place. Perhaps the pickup of Ninjas in Pyjamas’ (NiP) previous coach of Twister pushed them above NiP, the team they play in the opening game of the tournament, who sit in third place in the LATAM region at the moment.
Drawing with NiP as predicted runners-up are Team Reciprocity, the current third-placed team in North America and the only NA team to win an international tournament since Year 1 -- a real wildcard team for North American hopes. Finally, we have Fnatic who, despite their third-place Finals finish in just the last season of the Pro League, only two people believe can make it out of the group stage, both as runners-up.
Group B
Group B predicted Top 2
While there were mixed results in group A, group B has a clear pecking order. The European leaders, the American champions and the Brazilian leaders (Team Empire, Rogue and Immortals) all meet in this group along with Spacestation Gaming -- on paper this is the best group there. While all these teams have impressive credentials over 75% of all staff believe that Empire can continue their LAN form at the Invitational and make it out of the group ahead of the long-standing North American name of Rogue, a team which has only ever lost to Evil Geniuses at Majors.
Despite Immortals (IMT) topping the LATAM leaderboard at the mid-season and giving G2 a run during the Season 8 Finals, their loss to mantisFPS at the Six Major and their sixth-place standing in the BR6 LAN tournament has certainly hurt their chances in the eyes of staff as Spacestation Gaming just about beats them out to third place leaving IMT in last.
Group C
Group C predicted Top 2
There’s an extremely clear split here between G2 and Liquid who all but one person believes will make it out of the group, and Mock-it and mantis FPS who have next to no one believing in them. The one person who takes Mock-it to beat out the star-studded lineup of Team Liquid is Goob (a graphic designer/video editor/news reporter/developer) who, if correct, would’ve correctly predicted one of the biggest upsets of the tournament.
While it would be an upset, it would not necessarily be surprising as Team Liquid sits with one of the very worst records at Majors ever -- one win against ROOM FACTORY and four losses against Mindfreak, Rogue, Team Vitality and Obey Alliance lists their entire history at previous Majors, a record they’d be desperate to break at this $2m tournament.
Group D
Group D predicted Top 2
The final group is one of a mixed story as, while almost everyone agrees that Evil Geniuses will earn a top two position, there’s no clear agreement on who will come second. There are the APAC champions who finished joint third at the last Season Finals but failed to make it out of the group stage at the last Major, as well as two promising European teams in PENTA and LeStream.
PENTA previously attended the last two Majors as Team Vitality and then Mock-it and now are in a curious position of defending the organisation’s Invitational title while being the single least successful roster in Major history with four losses in four games. This is obviously a very different roster than those previous events, a fact which can also be said for LeStream who has a completely different look to the previous events. Both these teams will hope to surprise staff and make it out of the group stage instead of finishing in 3-4th.
Predicted Winner
Staff Predictions on who will win the title
Just like Evil Geniuses’ group, they are the clear favourites to take the title. While G2 has had a somewhat weak Season while EG has been dominating North America, this is still somewhat surprising considering Evil Geniuses huge crash out of the Season 8 Finals and their history of being R6’s perpetual runners-up (Invite 2018, the Paris Major, DreamHack Austin, and the US Nationals).
While most people have gone for the classic favourites from each region of EG, G2, and Liquid, there’s a single “outsider” represented in Team Empire. Leaky and I, the two most accurate staff members from the Season 8 prediction article, remain the sole believers in the Russian “underdog” story in which the recently promoted Challenger League team will bounce back from their terrible performance as ROOM FACTORY at the last Invitational to win the entire tournament.
--- You can see these games begin live in just two hours time when the Six Invitational 2019 kicks of on the rainbow6 and rainbow6Bravo Twitch accounts with complete coverage available here at SiegeGG!
Today's initial Six Invitational matchups