Go on, how many of you expected to see Liquid, PARIVISION, GamerLegion, or HEROIC in the playoffs?

Liquid's seed meant they had a decent shout, and PARIVISION being quite good was beneficial for them, too, but GamerLegion with Snax at the helm? HEROIC without an AWPer? They genuinely surprised us.

It’s a welcome surprise, for what it’s worth, but we think the surprises will come to an end from this point onwards.

Although we won’t know the matchups until the draft is done on Wednesday night, it’s just hard to see how any of these teams can beat the four higher ranked teams in the conversation. And it’s even harder to guess at which poisoned chalice they’ll choose to pick.

We can only assume Liquid will go for Falcons - seeing as kyousuke will be absent in Malta - but we don’t trust Liquid enough to say that will be enough for them to go through. We’d then hope that PARIVISION will go for Spirit, just so zweih can prove his point, but with how donk is playing, who would want to do that?

As for GamerLegion and HEROIC, lads, you’ve been entertaining, but this is almost certainly the end of the line. FURIA looked somewhat slow against FUT, but they’ll surely heat up now, and Vitality? Well, no one is going to be fond of having to play them.

We don’t know which of the big teams will win this, but we do know that one of them 100% will. Each team has had a slow map, each team has had to rely on a star to get through that, but each team also-

Ah, who are we kidding? Congratulations, Vitality.