RBY 7U Hype Post!
As this tournament progresses through its third week, I'm going to highlight some of the runs so far and make some predictions about where we are heading. I'm primarily going to focus on familiar names, so I apologize if I don't cover you; I unfortunately do not know all of you. Also, if I don't know your pronouns, you're getting "they." I wish luck to all the players regardless.
Winners' Bracket
Starting from the top, we have a reasonably accomplished player in stunner047. While stunner047 has only played one full series at this point, I suspect their knowledge of RBY and strength as a competitor will carry them into Winners' Quarterfinals with relative ease. Their most recent success was a solid performance in RBY UU in UUFPL.
Right below stunner047 is one of two highlight matchups for this week: Ice Yazu vs. chuva de perereca. Ice Yazu is a solid player with a pretty good history in RBY, especially in UU. They notably placed second in the recent RBY UU Invitational. On the other hand, we have chuva de perereca, who is easily the most accomplished player in the entire tournament, having recently won the RBY OU Winter Seasonal, won the RBY UU Spotlight Tournament, and played excellently in SPL. Despite me being pretty sure the only 7U matches they've played so far are the two they've won, chuva de perereca is my "overall one seed" and my favorite to win this entire tournament. This should a great match between two strong RBY players, and I suspect the winner will go very far in the tournament (and the loser will probably make some headway through the lower bracket).
Moving on to the second quadrant, my pick to emerge is Gastlies. To my knowledge, Gastlies is the most experienced 7U player in the tournament. She's been playing semi-regularly since the inception of the micro tier and is a competent player. She's probably my two seed at highest and my four seed at lowest. The only person nearby in the bracket that I could see beating her is probably Lily. My prediction for this part of Winner's Semifinals is chuva de perereca vs. Gastlies.
The third quadrant has some stiff competition. Still yet to finish is Sificon vs. 5Dots, which pits two decently well-known players against each other. Based on my research, both seem like lower-tier specialists with a fair amount of tournament experience and a history of contribution. This should be a good one. The winner catches no breaks, however, as they'll be facing tour host ClairDeLuna. ClairDeLuna is a relatively newer player to my knowledge, but she's dedicated a lot of time to playing and advancing 7U in the Smogon RBY Discord server. I'd probably pick her to emerge among the three, but it'll be close.
Also in the quadrant is juoean. She has been playing 7U for quite some time now and she is a reasonably accomplished RBY player, having won the RBY UU Invitational and taking second in the RBY NU Spotlight Tournament. While I think she'll face some tough opponents, I predict she'll win her next two matches. She is probably also among my top four seeds.
In our last quadrant, we have a few more good matches. In the upper half, Melanie uwu is my choice to emerge. She's a pretty seasoned OU player with experience from the RBY OU Circuit and RBYPL. I think this should be enough to get her into Winners' Quarterfinals.
Finally, we have our second highlight match: Torchic vs. phoopes. Torchic is the only player with a resume even in striking distance of that of chuva de perereca. Torchic has a pretty long history of solid tour performances, but his most recent achievements include holding best regular season record in RoAPL for RBY OU and winning the RBY Ubers Circuit Tournament. In the opposite corner, we have phoopes. The moderator is a perennial solid performer, though his most notable performance is probably his victory in the RBY Triple Threat Tournament that he hosted. I expect this to be a really good one. If I must predict, I think I'll go with Torchic to win this round and eventually meet juoean in Winners' Semifinals. Torchic rounds out my top four seeds as well.
In summary, my prediction for Winners' Semifinals is chuva de perereca vs. Gastlies and juoean vs. Torchic.
Losers' Bracket
To be frank, I don't recognize a whole bunch of names in the lower bracket at this point. I personally suspect Grand Finals will feature two players that are currently in Winners' Bracket. Among the players down there, the biggest names for me are Eve, BT89, and CrapAtRBY. The first two suffered some early upsets and CrapAtRBY had the misfortune of facing Gastlies in the very first round. Regardless, these are the players that I foresee having the most extensive Losers' runs. Players be warned.
There are also a handful of new players in Losers' that have been pretty active in the aforementioned Discord. These include, but probably aren't limited to, nicole7735, Bushmaster, Useless Uses, The Faz, Gangsta Spongebob, and Megachiroptera. While these players are largely pretty new, they have enough meta knowledge that they may be trickier opponents in the Losers' Bracket.
Closing
Wow, this will be a long tournament. This has already been going on for a couple of weeks and we still have like what, another ten weeks? Anyway, the tournament seems to be running smoothly so far and there have been a lot of really good games. This has been quite a fun tournament as a spectator. In a few weeks, I will see how my predictions panned out and I'll make some new ones. Cheers, and best of luck to those still playing!
