KARDS World Championship 2019 Tournament

Last weekend (Nov 2-3), the KARDS World Championship 2019 Tournament kicked off with 128 players competing in the first round.

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 128-player, single-elimination tournament, every single match counts now. We saw fierce fighting in this first round of the tournament featuring a best of three series of matches. Already, we have several upsets and surprises!


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)
  
• Darkness (Winner Season 5, Top-10 Season 7)
  
• ROY1380 (Winner Season 4, Top-5 Season 7)
  
• Drogear (Top-5 Season 7)
  
• Nerka99 (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!

The biggest upsets so far are ROY1380 losing 2:1 against Mortimoose and Darkness not reaching the second round either.


Another nerve-wracking series was Spooz vs hannez (check out Spooz’ Twitch channel) where Spooz managed to turn around the initial 0:1 loss into a 2:1 victory. Spooz’ comment on this turnaround: Turned a 0:1 into a 2:1. I am still flashed from that pressure

The longest series was fought by Vimesey and Dawnbreaker (check out Vimesey’s Twitch channel): Their three matches lasted a total of 55 minutes and saw Vimesey as winner! Directly after these matches, Vimesey showed good sportsmanship and commented: it was cool and nervous

Of course other matches were also intense! Have a look at tournament footage from SaunaCat vs Zorglub and The Big Bob Adis vs Cobra Wizard.


We have also general insight from this first round. 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. Germany was the least popular option as main nation. Food for thought!

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


Interesting:

• The most popular deck in the first round was a Britain / Japan deck with an average win-ratio of 47%.
  
• The least popular deck played was Soviet / Britain with a win-ratio of 0%.
  
• The most successful deck, even though unpopular, was a Japan / USA combination with 100% success.
  
• Britain / Germany and Germany / Britain decks were not played at all.
  

This was the first round of the KARDS World Championship 2019 Tournament. The following rounds will take part on November 9-10 and 16-17.

Then, we will see even fiercer matches with best-of-five series as we the stakes get higher!

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