The Groups Of Riyadh Masters’ Group Stage

Riyadh Masters 2024 starts with a play-in stage followed by a decider stage. However, eight of the 20 teams do not compete in these stages because they’ve earned the right to start competing directly in the group stage.

A few days ago, ESL announced the group of each of these teams.

Group A

Group A of Riyadh Masters 2024 features eight teams, four of which are already known:

• Team Falcons
• Gaimin Gladiators
• Team Spirit
• OG

Arguably, the best three teams of the tournament have all been placed in the same group, which is a little unfortunate. This isn’t strange, however, because the seeding was most likely done based on the ESL Pro Tour Leaderboard, where OG and Team Spirit are ranked 7^th and 8^th respectively.

OG are not one of the top three teams in the race but they were sent to group A in an attempt to balance the groups based on the number of EPT points. Team Falcons (1^st) have 18.280, Gaimin Gladiators (3^rd) have 10.960, OG have 5.496, and Team Spirit have 5.200.

But the reality of the pecking order is a bit different and is revealed to us by the most recent tournament results. Based on those results, Gaimin Gladiators and Team Spirit are stronger than their EPT ranks indicate.

For OG and the other four teams who will join later, group A of Riyadh Masters 2024 will be very challenging. On the bright side, six of the eight teams advance to the playoffs, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to avoid the bottom two positions.

The format is round-robin and all matches are best-of-two, which means that each team will get to play seven matches and receive points for each game victory. Because of this, the best teams will rise to the surface and competitors have no excuses if they get eliminated early.

LET’S GO 🔥 https://t.co/ZTMKEjG6Hr

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) June 29, 2024

Group B

Group B features these four teams:

• BetBoom Team
• Team Liquid
• Tundra Esports
• XG (former Xtreme Gaming)

These teams are also strong but not quite as strong as the ones from group A. It’s worth noting, however, that WBG.XG won two important trophies this year, at Games of the Future and Elite League S1. They also finished 2^nd at PGL Wallachia S1.

BetBoom also played well but had two important failures: Elite League S1 (11^th – 12^th) and PGL Wallachia S1 (9^th – 11^th). At their other four tournaments, they finished 2^nd twice and 3^rd twice. So they too are a very strong team.

Header: ESL, Esports World Cup Foundation