100 Thieves Valorant Sent Home On The First Day Of Ludwig x Tarik Invitational 2

Popular content creators Tarik and Ludwig hosted the second edition of the Ludwig x Tarik Invitational Valorant tournament, which will run from January 14 to 15. The two streamers funded the $50,000 event, and four teams were invited to participate.

THE GREATEST VALO EVENT IS BACK

LUDWIG x TARIK INVITATIONAL 2

JANUARY 13-14🎆 pic.twitter.com/3Z8fbnqae8

— ludwig (@LudwigAhgren) January 8, 2024

List Of Teams

The four participants include:

• Moist x Shopify: thief, brawk, flyuh, mada, v1c
• 100 Thieves: Asuna, Boostio, eeiu, bang, Cryocells
• Cloud9: wippie, vanity, Xeppaa, jakee, OXY
• Oxygen Esports: dapr, mitch, Reduxx, skuba, Verno

Moist x Shopify is co-owned by Ludwig, which doesn’t make their invitation to the event a surprise. The interesting team among the four is 100 Thieves, who will be debuting their new roster.

After a disappointing string of results in 2023, 100 Thieves aimed to reach new heights by signing Kelden “Boostio” Pupello, the former in-game leader of the Evil Geniuses squad that won the VALORANT Champions Tour at the end of 2023.

Due to mismanagement and contractual issues, the championship squad had to break apart, which is how Boostio found himself in the 100 Thieves roster.

Let’s recap what happened on the first day of the Ludwig x Tarik Invitational.

Upper Bracket Semifinals

The Ludwig x Tarik Invitational immediately begins in the Playoffs stage, following a Double Elimination format. The Upper Bracket Semifinal matchups and results are as follows:

• Cloud9 0-2 Moist x Shopify
• Oxygen Esports 2-0 100 Thieves

Though Ludwig’s Valorant team was not favored to win, they managed to upset Cloud9 and defeat them 2-0 to advance to the Upper Bracket Final. On the other side of the bracket, 100 Thieves failed their roster debut match after losing the series 0-2 to Oxygen Esports.

These results set up the next matchups with Moist x Shopify facing Oxygen Esports for a spot in the Grand Final, while Cloud9 and 100 Thieves were sent down to the Lower Bracket to eliminate each other.

Upper Bracket Final

The next match was the Upper Bracket Final between Moist x Shopify and Oxygen Esports.

The two teams converted their map picks to keep the series tied at 1-1. Though the series seemed close and intense up to this point, Oxygen Esports looked like they would cleanly close the series in Ascent, the decider map. 

Oxygen Esports found themselves up 11-3 on the third map, and everyone thought the match was over. Somehow, Moist x Esports went on a 9-1 run in the next ten rounds to force the map into overtime. 

Then, the Moist x Shopify squad won the two overtime rounds to win the map 14-12 and booked their spot in the Grand Final; a fantastic comeback and an unfortunate choke. 

Lower Bracket Elimination Match

After such an intense series, we were brought to a brutal matchup between Cloud9 and 100 Thieves, who would eliminate each other on the first day of the event. 

Like the previous series, both teams won their map picks. However, both games ended 13-11, ensuring the series was super close and fierce, and boy, did we get a show on the third map.

In the final map of the series that would decide elimination, the two teams took Icebox into overtime. Sadly, 100 Thieves could not hold their own during overtime and lost the map 13-15. 

With this result, 100 Thieves’ roster debut failed, and they were the first team knocked out of the second Tarik x Ludwig Invitational. Still, this roster is only a week old and has shown good potential. Let’s give them some time to gel.