KARDS World Championship 2019 Tournament

Last weekend (Nov 9-10), the KARDS World Championship 2019 Tournament was heading full steam into round two and three with tough matches between the champions.

This first official KARDS Championship Tournament is the culmination of a two month long process to find the best players and to determine the four finalists which will be flown to Iceland for the grand finale.

As a single-elimination tournament, every single match counts! We saw intense matches in round two and three of the tournament, both featuring best-of-five series. The field was close together already with only 59 player remaining at start of round 2.


16 champions remain in the World Championship Tournament after this weekend!

Here are the champions that will compete next weekend to reach the finals:

• Orbital_Armada vs Drogear
  
• top lad vs SaunaCat
  
• Maestro vs Gearbot
  
• tedimi vs OnlyInDeath
  
• D13 vs Ahri
  
• GKZhukov vs Hisendam
  
• Fenrir vs Cybernetic
  
• GARRRODRIVE vs JKing 7
  

Check out the full tournament brackets (courtesy of The Big Bob Adis).


Highly anticipated matches were those with the winners of the previous seasons and the highest ranked players such as:

• Gearbot (Winner Season 7)
  
• Cybernetic (Winner Season 6, Top-5 Season 7)
  
• Drogear (Top-5 Season 7)
  

There are, of course, many more strong players - we can mention only a few here. Keep in mind, every participant is one of the top players in KARDS!

Above mentioned champions scored all victories, but not without struggle! Drogear, for example had to go over all five matches in the series.

The biggest upsets so far are kov losing 0-3 against JKing7 and tedimi winning 3-1 against Spooz.


The fastest match lasted only 1 minute and 10 seconds. It was fought between Ser Armory and gabo (Gabo won with his tournament deck 1 vs Ser Armory with his tournament deck 2).

The longest match required 17 minutes and 24 seconds. Vimesey and kesvan battled and gave no quarter! In the ned, kesvan won this match with his tournament deck 2 against Vimesey who used his tournament deck 1.

Have a look at the full list of tournament decks for round 2 and 3.

The longest series of matches was fought by Xopy and top lad: Their three matches lasted a total of 54 minutes and saw top lad as winner! And even though Xopy was a bit disappointed by the outcome (after all, everything was still open after the 2:2), he was good sports and congratulated top lad.

Of course other matches were also intense! Have a look at tournament footage from Cybernetic vs Mantequilla and Cybernetic vs Saltlesf.


Same as with round 1 before, we have also general insight from round 2 and 3. The following graphs are a feast for the analysts amongst us.

The first graph shows the popularity of the nations, how often they are selected as main nation during the tournament and how often they appear in any of the decks played.


Japan was the most popular nation in terms of overall use. Soviet Union was the least popular option as main nation.

The second graph shows the deck combinations played and their win-ratio:


Interesting:

• The most popular deck in the first round was - again - a Britain / Japan deck with an average win-ratio of 55%.
  
• The least popular deck played was Soviet / Britain with a win-ratio of 0%. Same as in round 1.
  
• The most successful deck, even though unpopular, was a Germany / Soviet combination with 68% success.
  
• USA / Germany decks were not played at all.
  

This were the second and third rounds of the KARDS World Championship 2019 Tournament. The following rounds will take part on November 16-17.

Then, we will see the most intense action as everyone will fight to reach the finals and a sponsored flight to Iceland (plus accommodation). Only four will reach the finals!

Stay up to date and follow KARDS on Twitter and Facebook. Keep an eye on our Twitch channel as well.