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DOU 2020 Doubles Invitational [won by Qwello Lee]

Top 8
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(16) AuraRayquaza vs JRL (9)

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(2) Memoric vs Frania (7)

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(14) umbry vs Qwello Lee (11)

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(4) SMB vs shrop (12)​

The deadline for Top 8 is Sunday, December 27, at 11:59 PM Eastern time (GMT -5).

As always, replays are required for this tournament. Also, be sure to post your match times so we can watch live and possibly even stream!
 
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Gamer predictions incoming.

Memoric vs Frania - Easily the highlight set of the round. Both past seasonal winners, among other circuit tour wins (where Frania actually won the invitational in 2017), and both widely respected as incredible players. Memoric has definitely had the better year, coupling decent seasonal finishes with a Classic win, while Frania has had similar seasonal finishes but little playoff success in the other circuit tours. Both players had dicey top 16 sets. Memoric brought a slower kind of offense than Demantoid in g1 and 2, and almost got ran over by CB Zygarde in g2 after taking a solid lead. However, the epic durdle core (tho it seemed to be Specs Fini?) kept him afloat and led to a comfortable g3 with demon Spectrier. Frania seemed like he was going to have a really tough time getting through Suicune as the game progressed, but Toxic Mew was huge in keeping Suicune off the field long enough to take KOs and keep enough to manage it in the end. G2 had a couple of slick reads paired with the Whirlwind Zapdos tech that really shut Paraplegic out when he seemed to be in the ascendency with his Zygarde and Fini. Even though both players seem to be so evenly matched, I lean slightly towards Memoric in this matchup because I think hes been coming up with some awesome team ideas recently (including WCOP) and Frania likes to stick more with whats known to be good, with a little twist. Both can be really aggressive in their reads so this feels like it will come down to who brings the tricks in their teams to give that edge.

SMB vs shrop - SMB is one of two players at the moment who you can never really justify predicting against, while Shrop has come back recently after a long break and has seemingly hit the ground running. SMB's seasonals were surprisingly average for his very high standards, but who cares when you win both the DLTs in one year. Shrop started a bit later and had relatively mediocre performances, but added a really solid 4th place in the most recent seasonal to that. Both also took their T16 sets in two games. SMB looked very comfortable, although it did seem to me like Kiichikos either made a poor building choice with no TW Kart in g1 or threw at the end by not going for Meteor Beam into Kyub + TW. G2 was over in 2 turns, and SMB has this good habit of revealing tricks that can end a game almost as it starts. You can be having a good set vs him and then g3 can be over turn 1 just like that. Shrop had a very simple g1 since Tenzai brought a pretty average team with DD Kyub as the only wincon, which isn't good to begin with. G2 should probably have been easier but he made life very hard for himself by throwing away Lele in the middle of the game when there was an easy double into the Genesect. Rillaboom proceeded to cause big problems but Shrop held it together just fine. Shrop will have to be on top of his game to beat SMB, but its very possible because he is a very strong player. SMB's team choice will be key here, as we expect great play, whether his teams are a hit or a miss and if the tricks we so often see line up nicely into Shrop's team. Interestingly, both players met in T8 of DLT 2 and SMB beat Shrop very handily, so it remains to be seen if Shrop can get revenge.

umbry vs Qwello Lee - I wasn't really sure where to go with this matchup at first, since I haven't actually watched them play outside of this invitational. They both had decent 2020s, umbry had a string of average-poor results outside of the 4th place in spring seasonal, while Qwello Lee had slightly better results with a 3rd place in the same seasonal and a 2nd place DLT finish. A quick look at Snake also shows that they were the two best performing DOU players which is epic. The difference maker for me was how their T16 sets looked - umbry made light work of Z Strats, though aided by a couple of missteps (I think to t5 of g1 and t7 of g2) while Qwello had a far tougher set but somehow had the best Spectrier check in the format - Ice Beam Mew. Once he froze the Spectrier in both games it was quite a comfortable finish but in g2 he looked shaky and got caught out by Dragon Claw Kyub from YoBuddy. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised whichever way this goes, both players seem quite evenly matched, but I'll lean towards umbry based on the invitational games so far.
 
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