1.
lax [uu/nu/lc] vs. 16. Charmflash [ru]
pretty banger mu right off the top. both have had some great tournament runs so seeing them paired this early is pretty nice for the spectators. lax has been dominant across multiple tiers in the past year or so, so finding him in the number 1 seed isnt all too surprising. charm on the other hand did the full pl circuit this past year and picked up good records in most of the lower tier tours. im not sure who would be favored in pu here since ive never seen either of them play it, or just dont rmbr it. uu is going to be the closest game imo, both players have become very comfortable playing it recently, and that should lead to a fairly exciting game. charm made uupl finals and played in the tiebreak with his team, after building for himself for a majority of it iirc. lax on the other hand hasnt played a ton of uu on smogon itself, but he has played it a lot in other forum tours with his own teams. overall this is a great mu, but i think lax just has the edge bc of how dominant hes been.
2.
Adaam [uu/ru/nu] vs. 15. Serene Grace [lc/pu]
dont rlly know a ton about either of these players so just mainly going with adaam since he did better all around. he should have a fairly large edge in uu/ru/nu just bc of his open win+general tier knowledge in the others. serene does have an edge in lc/pu though since im fairly sure hes mained lc for a while now, and i think he did well in pu open.
3.
Pohjis [ru/nu/lc/pu] vs. 14. Accelgor [uu]
love both of these guys, so glad to see another fun matchup in round 1. while pohjis may be 2 much of a pussy to join snake, it doesnt retract from the fact hes dominated the lower tier circuit for a while now. maybe next to finch in tournament games played during the past year, pohjis knows all these tiers well. making just about every circuit ribbon tour playoffs last year (and probably on good pace to do the same this year?), nobody has done as well as him when it comes to these circuits. inches away from making nu open finals three times in a row, every open for generation 7 in fact. accel should be favored in uu however, as hes held the fort down in that tier for a while now. overall this should be another fun series.
4.
Pak [uu/ru/nu] vs. 13. HT [pu/lc]
aside from the most recent spl, paks been on a great run that is culminating in these slam playoffs. dominating uu in spl9 and snake, he should easily be favored over HT in uu/ru/nu just bc of him being generally a better player+tier knowledge is about even from what ive seen. ht is given a little bit of an edge in pu/lc just bc hes had deeper runs in both of those tours+seems to have the tier knowledge in both of them. overall i think i favor pak a lot more, as his edges in tiers he knows are a lot greater, and he should be able to make up any ground that ht has just bc of his overall playing abilitiy.
5. Kink [ru] vs. 12.
Corazan [uu]
kind of a hard series to predict for me since i dont rlly know much about either player in lower tiers. kink should be favored in ru just bc hes done well in opens + is starting it in snake, while cora is doing a similar thing in uu. aside from that its just going to come down to team choice + playing ability, and as ive seen a lot more from cora, id have to give him an edge in both of those fields.
6. Santu [uu] vs. 11.
Star [ru/nu/pu/lc]
this series isnt as one sided as the predict shows, since i think santus shown he can take down some big names in tours like this while being a fairly heavy underdog. but just looking at it on paper, star has done much better in just about every tier but uu recently. during his tourban this man played a ton of ladder games in just about every meta, while helping support a lot of these tiers in tours like snake and spl. i think just bc hes gonna have a ton of support and he has more tier knowledge in a lot of these, its hard not to see him as the favorite in a majority of these games. would not be surprised to see santu pull off the win here as he is the higher seed though.
7.
Garay oak [uu/ru/nu] vs. 10. Xiri [pu]
similar to other players in these playoffs, garays also been having a good run recently in lower tiers. while he did focus mainly on ubers, and a little bit of nu, before last snake he still did keep up with other lower tiers. xiri on the other hand was a fairly unknown name to most of the community prior to this slam/snake. known for mostly being a pu player, surprisingly he made it just off of uu/ru which does show he shouldnt be counted out in this series. even with that, i still think its hard to favor him outside of pu, since i think garays the better player and he doesnt have the tier knowledge edge needed in other tiers to overcome that i dont think.
8. Teddeh vs. 9. Eternally
rooting for eternally to win it all, but overall would be happy to see quite a few names take it since there are quite a few friends here n_n