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I have loved this tournament since I first learned about the tournament system of smogon grand slam last year.It has completely exceeded my expectations to get playoffs tbh. I hope smogon grand slam will get better and better in the future. I would like to thank my friends who encouraged me all the way (Most of Chinese community, my ubers friends and some of my friends from other communities.) Then here I would like to thank the people who helped me in playoffs tiebreak and playoffs.
unfortunate to go out early but can't win them all, ggs. Massive thank you to tier for all the support in NU through open in playoffs, wouldn't have made it this far otherwise and I know once you're back you'll cook this meta. Thank you as well to RichardMillePlainThe StrapHackerentrocefalo for teams and tests during poffs, and all my friends who I either talked about stuff with or who were cheering for me, it means a lot. I'll be back for this tour next year, will keep trying to get mine. RichardMillePlain win it all from here
Looks like I was wrong about the new Kingler, Colin has not had an easy run and I doubt he’s had an army of support getting him this way too which is great credit to him. Similarly, Michael has made it to Grand Slam finals while maining seemingly “maining” a million tiers. A finals that no one would expect, but I’ll certainly be tuning in if I’m not too jetlagged. If Michael wins Excalibuwrath can make a huge post about how this is the first time someone’s gotten 3 different indivs except for… Ciele empo abr? The elusive 3 trophy club being so small is definitely a bigger reason than skill transitivity across tiers, but still. Glad to see both here, may the better player win.
This is so extremely deserved by Colin. He has been surgical and consistent in tours lately, and the fact that he is in contention for an individual trophy is not surprising at all.
My very biased prediction is Colin wins 3-2. Michael is a great opponent, but Colin is better right now.
Looks like I was wrong about the new Kingler, Colin has not had an easy run and I doubt he’s had an army of support getting him this way too which is great credit to him. Similarly, Michael has made it to Grand Slam finals while maining seemingly “maining” a million tiers. A finals that no one would expect, but I’ll certainly be tuning in if I’m not too jetlagged. If Michael wins Excalibuwrath can make a huge post about how this is the first time someone’s gotten 3 different indivs except for… Ciele empo abr? The elusive 3 trophy club being so small is definitely a bigger reason than skill transitivity across tiers, but still. Glad to see both here, may the better player win.
MichaelderBeste2 has entered a tie for 7th all-time with three individual tournament finals. This tie contains an illustrious group, bringing Michael into a draw with, among others, top 10 all-time players BKC, Tesung and Tricking. However, the name in this group that most catches the eye is Ciele, the only member of the 3-trophy club to have done so in only three finals appearances, a feat which Michael is looking to accomplish right now. (This group also includes ABR and SoulWind, who mixed in a few finals losses here and there, and Empo, who somehow has 5 finals appearances and 5 wins). At the risk of jinxing things, Michael's whole profile compares quite well with Ciele's; they both have three semifinal appearances and seven quarterfinal appearances, while Michael's 54-39 sheet record is a good bit better than Ciele's 28-25 in both volume and winrate. I will leave the armchair analyst agendas for after the finals.
Meanwhile, Colin has reached his first individual finals, absolutely dominating a stacked bracket to get there with a 3-0 over Skarpherim, a 3-0 over Star, and a 3-1 over JustFranco. In my tournament preview, I speculated that Colin's biggest selling point in this tournament is the fact that he'd likely be favoured over the field in Little Cup, and if he could break even in the other tiers then that might be enough to keep winning. Well, I would rule that prediction as inconclusive, since Colin has made this run while only going to LC once; this is the most absurd part of the bracket run to me, which is that the LC mainer has gone 8-1 in non-LC tiers against a loaded run of opponents.
My question when conceiving this post was, how rare is it for players with Colin's tournament pedigree (3-6 on the sheet, no individual tour top 8s, no top 16s either for that matter) to make runs like this? (Note: I am putting aside OSDT stats for all comparisons below because of the much more limited crossover between Doubles players and the other tournaments). It's actually not too uncommon in recent memory; putting aside the most recent Smogon Tour, each of the past 5 individual tournaments have featured a finalist making their first-ever top 8 (Fusien and oldspicemike in OST, ChrisPBacon in Masters, mind gaming in Classic, clean in OLT, and LpZ in the last Slam). And for that matter, Colin's 9 sheet games actually place him right in the middle of this group at the respective moments where each of them made their finals appearances, greater in volume than ChrisPBacon's 3-1, Fusien's 2-1, and LpZ's 1-1, just below clean's 3-7. It's also not too uncommon for players to have limited sheet records even if they had deep tournament runs prior to breaking through; think Giannis Antetokommo-o's 1-7 sheet record prior to Slam 2023.
I'm going to take the opportunity to go on a fun tangent. How many players in the 2020s (doing so for the whole of Smogon history is made irritating because I don't have a neat and easy way to search for this, but I'll do it eventually) have made a run to the finals with an even more limited major tournament pedigree than Colin, with zero top 8s and zero sheet games to that point? Did any of them win as ultimate dark horses?
OST 2024. Storm Zone v. Antonazz (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games). Storm Zone wins. Antonazz, since then, has a 5-6 sheet record and no further top 8s. OST 2023. Vert (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games) v. Stellar Flares (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games). Vert wins. Stellar Flares, since then, has a 1-2 sheet record and no further top 8s. Vert, meanwhile, has a 6-2 sheet record since then, with finals appearances at OLT 2023 and STour 36. Grand Slam 2022 (11). Garay oak v. crying (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games). Garay oak wins. crying, since then, has a 22-25 sheet record, with top 8 appearances at STour 35 and Slam 12. Classic 2021 (6). ABR v. crucify (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games). ABR wins. crucify, since then, has a 10-16 sheet record and a run to top 4 at Classic 10. OLT 2020 (7). Tricking v. Separation (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games). Tricking wins. Separation, since then, has a 29-24 sheet record and no further top 8s. Grand Slam 2020 (9). Santu v. pdt (0 prior top 8s, 0 prior sheet games). Santu wins. pdt, since then, has a 39-25 sheet record, with a single further top 8 just now, at Slam 14.
Nonetheless, players with no prior top 8s are, to my count, 5-13 in individual tournament finals this decade, and three of those winners claimed their win over another player in the finals with no prior top 8s (Fusien over oldspicemike in OST 2025, Vert over Stellar Flares in OST 2023, and Garay oak over crying in Grand Slam 2022). The other two success stories here are Lusa over Eternal Spirit at STour 31 and LpZ over mncmt at Slam 2024, and it's the latter, a dark horse run that involved taking out SoulWind and xavgb en route to the finals, that springs to mind thinking about Colin's run right now. In a matchup between a player that might be looking to conclude their historic career against someone looking to jumpstart their own, the narratives write themselves. Looking forward to it :))
