Evil Geniuses advance to tiebreaker bracket over Party Astronauts

Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip's side will next take on 9z, with the winner facing paiN for the final spot at PGL Major Antwerp on offer to the Americas.

Evil Geniuses have come out on top of the final Swiss match at the Americas RMR tournament, beating fellow North American squad Party Astronauts in a three-map series to advance to the sixth-place tiebreaker bracket, joining paiN and 9z.

Due to paiN having the highest Bucholz score — which seeds and ranks teams based on their previous opponents — among the three teams, they will advance directly to the final decider match, while Evil Geniuses will have to face off against 9z to determine which team will play the last series to decide who gets the Contenders spot at PGL Major Antwerp.

The sixth-place decider bracket will commence on Friday at 11:00 , and anything other than qualifying for the Major will be an immense disappointment for EG, who have continued to struggle since their formation.

It was Party Astronauts' pick of Overpass that kicked things off, but it looked anything other than that for the majority of the first half of the map. Multi-kill rounds from Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta and William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba helped Evil Geniuses establish firm control on the CT side, an early string of three rounds from Ben "⁠ben1337⁠" Smith's side quickly becoming a distant memory as EG emerged ahead 10-5 at the half before shutting down a comeback effort from the Astronauts following the side swap, taking the map 16-12.

The tides turned on Mirage as it was Party Astronauts who put up an early lead, going up 6-0 before a back-and-forth ensued toward the end of the half, ending in a 10-5 scoreline in favor of the Astronauts this time. A pistol round victory allowed them to further extend that lead to 12-5 before EG made a heroic bid to fight back into the map, winning eight rounds straight to take the lead only to stumble at the final hurdle, with Party Astronauts managing to take things over the line in round 30.

Inferno was where EG firmly stamped their authority on the proceedings, stepping up the level expected of the players on their roster. A pistol round and subsequent conversion was all that Party Astronauts had to their name for the entirety of the first half as EG won 13 rounds in a row, and although ben1337 and company made one final effort to rally back into the map, the lopsided scoreline of the first half was too much to overcome as EG eventually sealed the deal, 16-9.