Playoffs Grand Slam XIV - Playoffs

Vertigo

Vertigo

new weapons, same war
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FINAL STANDINGS
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Congratulations to all 16 of you that made it to this year's Grand Slam playoffs! Before moving on to the pairings, I'd like to thank ken, Maia, UT, Merritt and goldmason for being fantastic hosts, as well as Ticken for his tireless sheet work. This tournament was only possible due to your help and we're fortunate to have you all. I hope that whoever inherits the next edition of Grand Slam is fortunate enough to have such dependable hosts.

To determine the tiers played, players will have a bit over 24 hours after this post goes up to send me a ranking of all 6 tier preferences from most preferred to least preferred. The higher seed's two most preferred tiers, the lower seed's two most preferred, still unpicked tiers, and the higher seed's preferred pick amongst the last two tiers will determine the tier lineup for the set, which will be announced as soon as possible in this thread so players can prepare. If a player does not submit their tier preferences before the deadline then their list from the previous round will be used, or their opponent's top 5 tiers will be used if there is no previous list.

The purpose of this is to (1) decide all tiers quickly, allowing players to prep 5 teams instead of 6, and (2) try to balance tier selection so that the advantage of either seed is as small as possible, and leans towards the high seed. We believe this selection system achieves that by letting the high seed have the ultimate call over which tier to strike out, but giving lower seeds the ability to lock their preferred tiers before that happens (as opposed to past tier selection systems that simply gave high seed the ability to strike out a tier, resulting in a fairly big advantage).

The reason why we're asking players to provide a full list of their tier preferences rather than a back and forth where the higher seed sends their first two picks, then the lower seed, then the higher seed selects their final choice is so that we can get the list of tiers to both players as soon as possible, rather than having to deal with communication delays caused by each player needing to wait for their opponent to get back to the hosts.

Here is the list of people who qualified and their respective seed:
1. Shiba - 32 Points
2. JustFranco - 29 Points
3. DugZa - 28 Points, 81.48% Win Ratio
4. mind gaming - 28 Points, 78.57% Win Ratio
5. MichaelderBeste2 - 27 Points
6. Skarpherim - 26 Points, 80.77% Win Ratio
7. Fc - 26 Points, 76% Win Ratio
8. pdt - 24 Points
9. SoulWind - 23 Points, 78.26% Win Ratio
10. Xiri - 23 Points, 76% Win Ratio
11. Colin - 22 Points, 76% Win Ratio
12. Fogbound Lake - 22 Points, 75% Win Ratio, 3rd Deepest Run: Top 32 (PU)
13. 691 - 22 Points, 75% Win Ratio, 3rd Deepest Run: Top 64 (LC)
14. Star - 22 Points, 75% Win Ratio, Deepest Run: Top 8 (UU/NU)
15. zuzhouwawa - 21 Points, 76.19% Win Ratio
16. RichardMillePlain - 21 Points, 73.91% Win Ratio


Round 1

1. Shiba vs 16. RichardMillePlain

2. JustFranco vs 15. zuzhouwawa

3. DugZa vs 14. Star

4. mind gaming vs 13. 691

5. MichaelderBeste2 vs 12. Fogbound Lake

6. Skarpherim vs 11. Colin

7. Fc vs 10. Xiri

8. pdt vs 9. SoulWind

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All sets will be Bo5 with the higher seed getting to choose the first tier to be played in a set while the loser picks the next one.
The deadline to submit your tiers to me is <t:1753156740>.
The deadline to get your games played is <t:1753675140>.
 
Making the kind of post that I would have appreciated as a spectator with very little first-hand memory of past tours, because considering the massive amount of effort it takes to qualify for this tournament it's kind of a shame that the Slam playoff threads rarely have good posts talking about the lesser-known players (and also want to justify the time I spent digging for subforum PL stats). This isn't a ranking post, I'll just try to sort through the different kinds of players in this playoff, talk about their resumes, and maybe give a bit of "how overdue are they for a trophy/this trophy," but there are going to be players that I would personally favour over others that I talk about later just because that made more sense to me in the writing order. If I missed any stats/records here or got any wrong then feel free to call me out but at least bump my react score while you're at it too. I'm going to move roughly from least-to-most recognizable names to the average SV tournament viewer, beginning with:

Part 1: the wild cards
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zuzhouwawa is probably reasonable to start with, the only one in this playoff with no sheet games. With a join date right before the end of 2023, 10 players in this playoff by my count have sheet wins that predate zuzhouwawa's Smogon account. From what I can tell, they originally joined as a NatDex player before dabbling with other tiers, including a positive record in the World Cup of Randbats, playoff appearances in a few low-tier ladder tournaments, and a few games in low-tier team tours. They qualified on the back of an Ubers Open win, beating MichaelderBeste2 and RichardMillePlain on the way, and so while they're surely an underdog here, it's always cool to see newer players succeed.

Shiba's an interesting case. They've been around for a while, with a few team tour wins, a WCoP trophy, and a whole pile of badges. While Shiba undeniably has pedigree as a UU player, however, they have essentially no track record in SV outside of this Slam, actively playing in low-tier tournaments over the past few years in oldgens instead. And of course, they qualified for this playoff as the first seed, with high placements in three different opens and several good wins, so there's reason for optimism, but whether you see an established veteran putting it together in SV or an underdog with maybe the shortest SV resume in this entire tournament is a matter of how you look at it.

Skarpherim is a fairly accomplished name compared to a few we'll get to next, but I'm adding them in this category because compared to some players with clearer areas of strength and weakness, I have a tougher time gauging Skarpherim's profile. Originally an AG/Ubers player, culminating in ribbons for both during gen 8's lifetime, they've since branched out in a few directions to diversify their portfolio. 11-4 across UUPLs in 2023-24 leading into a 3-5 debut SCL performance in SV UU. Rapid improvement in ADV OU, culminating in the tier's 2024 ribbon and a 1-4 SPL debut in the tier. An OLT qualification that narrowly missed making it out of Swiss. Positive in Ubers in WCoP 2024, 5-2 in SV RU in RUPL 2024, a Slam run this year propelled by an LC Open win. I think there's reason to believe in Skarpherim, and there are a few questions that will have interesting answers in this playoff. How well does the ADV OU grind translate to current gen low tiers? There are a whole bunch of promising results in these tiers here but not much with a substantial sample size; how many of these tiers end up being strengths?
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Part 2: the mainers
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Colin is the second player here with a join date in the 2020s, and is unique in this playoff as an LC mainer, with some good performances in LC individual and team tours. Even with a 3-6 debut SCL, Colin still has maybe the most substantial SV LC resume in this field (half the players here have basically never touched SV LC outside of early losses in LC Open), and if LC is a sufficiently difficult tier to get the hang of, then having a single tier where they're favoured over the field shortens the margin for error throughout the bracket. I'm talking about them here, though, because outside of a couple UU team tours they don't really have much of a track record in any other SV tiers, so they probably will have to leverage that LC advantage as much as they can. It's possible!

RichardMillePlain is an Ubers tour fixture at this point, 15-12 on the sheet in SV and (by my count) 16-8 in SV Ubers forum team tours. Like Colin, they're a 2020s join date, and also like Colin, they have essentially no results in any of the other tiers in this tournament. Their prospects likely hinge on how consistently they can leverage this strength (if you win the Ubers game the whole way through then you just need to split the rest of your games evenly), but while their SV Ubers track record is substantial, it's also in a probably less alien tier to the tours playerbase than LC. We'll see.

691 comes next in this group as a player whose most substantial track record undoubtedly comes in SV UU (3-3 on the sheet, multiple deep Open runs, 14-8 in subforum team tours, several deep individual subforum tournaments including 5th in the last UU circuit), but the PU performance has quietly been solid as well; the 1-0 in SCL and 3rd in this open get a bit more attention but they're 6-4 in subforum team tours as well. You'd probably feel more confident in them with a bit more of an official tour track record, but then again, LpZ is a very prominent recent example of a player who translated a big Slam run into opportunity in SCL and SPL, so that's the best-case here.

Xiri rounds out this group of players best-known for their low-tier performance, and of them, Xiri's the most accomplished of them as a current-gen player, sporting three ribbons in SM and SS low tiers along with an SCL trophy after a 7-3 run in SM PU. In SV, though their best results on the circuit tours along with their SCL run are in PU, they've actually put up more individual tournament runs in RU, and this year was their second deep NU Open run. Among this field, they're maybe the most accomplished SV low-tier player who hasn't had a substantial breakout into the wider tour scene, and notably, they're the first player I've talked about so far who's qualified for Slam before, reaching top 8 in 2019.
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Part 3: mainers who've breached containment
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pdt is a bit like RichardMillePlain in that he has generally specialized in a single low tier as a fixture in both SCL and WCoP. The difference, however, is that while Richard is 15-12 in that tier in SV, pdt is 19-10. They're unlike anyone discussed so far in this post in that they do have a SV OU track record in team tours, currently sitting 12-9. They're also the second player mentioned so far who's made it to a Slam playoff before, except while Xiri made top 8, pdt has gone all the way to the finals, in 2020. The same strategic benefit of mainers I've mentioned before, where being favoured over anyone in one particular tier makes your life easier in a Bo5, in this case UU, but now we're starting to talk about players whose track record outside of their tier specialties makes splitting the rest of the Bo5 for an entire playoff run plausible.

Fc, Ubers tier leader, the SV Ubers performance in officials has been solid albeit not quite at their SS high in the tier (a 6-1 run in SCL in SS Ubers), but the performance in Ubers circuit tournaments has been excellent, they've supplemented it with a solid 13-13 record in SV UU team tours, 9-12 in LC team tours, and 11-12 in SV OU on the sheet. The combination of experience in various SV low tiers and the general Pokemon skills necessary to perform at the highest level of SV OU competition both bode well for Slam in particular, a tournament where Fc's already made the semis once before.

JustFranco has had a really fantastic year. Top 8 in Smogon Tour, 4-2 in BW OU in SPL, 2-1 in WCoP and 6-4 in SCL in SV UU, 2nd in UU Circuit Championship, 1st in UU Masters, and an NU Open win en route to the 2nd seed here for good measure. It sure seems like right now JustFranco's firing on all cylinders, and there's a track record with other low tiers too, most notably a 6-3 SCL campaign in SV RU. Honestly, when I conceived of the "mainers who breached containment" category this is who I had in mind, because while pdt and Fc have translated their low-tier success to high-level OU competition nicely, JustFranco seems to be carrying the UU performance to everything they touch recently.

DugZa, honestly, might be flying under the radar. Sure, the 4-7 SCL run in SV PU in 2023 isn't a highlight, but the PU leader also put up a 9-3 record in that tier across subforum team tours that year, and followed up a quarterfinal finish in PU Open last year with a win this year. They're 12-5 in SV UU and 17-14 in SV NU subforum team tours. If you're skeptical as to how much that matters, well, they're also 13-7 in SV OU on the sheet, with an extra 2-1 in ORAS for good measure. They also made a pair of trophy tour semifinals at OST and Masters, taking out Trosko, Storm Zone and LpZ in the latter. DugZa might have the most well-rounded SV low tier resume of anyone in this playoff, and they're also a legit OU performer across the Fairy gens, and they still might be viewed as a longshot here.
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Part 4: the tour players

Fogbound Lake hasn't quite matched their 9-2 SCL 2023 in SV OU, but they've rounded into a consistently positive player in official team tours overall. How much that will translate here remains to be seen, and fundamentally that's the story with all of the tour players, how well their Pokemon proficiency will result in wins in tiers they've rarely or never played. Fogbound Lake does have a pretty solid 5-3 SCL in SV RU, and the 3rd place in LC Open is promising, but the low tier subforum tours are a mixed bag here, so this is definitely a question of projecting based on general Pokemon skills. Whether that performs better than the more specialized skillsets of low-tier mains is the fun part of Slam!

MichaelderBeste2, of course, might be the best example here of applying a broader Pokemon skillset to new low tiers specifically. In the blink of an eye, they solidified their place in Smogon history with a pair of individual trophies, and that might not even be the most prominent part of their Pokemon track record compared to the VGC and the Randbats success. There's more here in the way of SV low tier history, too, supplementing a 6-3 SCL in PU with a 2nd place on the NU Circuit and a bunch of excellent Open placements in both tiers. If there's a reason to be skeptical, it's that MichaelderBeste2's greatest (Smogon singles) strength is in SS rather than SV, but then again, they have Slam top 8's in both gens. Honestly, Michael might be due for a deep run that doesn't end with a win; another trophy here would solidify a tie for 3rd all-time and really, that might just be too much for the imagination to handle.

Star is a frequent pick for the best player of all time without an individual trophy, and so we'll see if this time is the one. Though they don't have a low tier run at SCL, they do have an RU ribbon this gen, a 3rd place at PU Circuit, and several podium finishes across several Slam Opens across the past three years. Now, if I can nitpick Star's odds here, it's the fact that, like Michael, their most dominant results come outside of SV: 7-2 in SS OU and 9-2 in ADV OU in SPL, a finals run at a Smogon Tour during SS current gen. Now, with all that said they're still 13-6 on the sheet in SV OU, so this comfortably falls within the nitpick domain, but I think the broader point is just that other players are more active in these tiers and in SV in general, even if Star's raw skills can compete with anyone.

mind gaming is an almost incomprehensible 32-10 on the sheet in SV. Yes, most of those are in OU, but there's still a 7-2 SCL run in PU in there. This Slam run here included a 3rd place in UU Open and a 2nd place in PU Open, so there are clear data points to the "when you just see the game that differently you can be good in any tier" hypothesis but I mean, we're talking about someone who made Classic finals after a year of grinding oldgens. mind gaming's perhaps not as "overdue" for a trophy as Star, but I think there's something to be said for maybe the most dominant player over the past few years to pick up a trophy.

SoulWind is a fascinating case. I genuinely think there's a case to be made that they're one of the players most overdue for a trophy in spite of already having three, because by every metric of performance in individual tournaments they're far and away everyone else, and the only issue is the 3-8 finals record. Now, it's worth pointing out a few things. SoulWind hasn't really put up a dominant team tour run since SV started, and their two SCL runs in SV lower tiers include a mediocre Ubers run and a brutal PU run. With that said, SoulWind has made podium finishes in Slam opens in four different tiers over the past three years. They qualify for everything, no matter what tier, and they usually win a few games while they're at it. I don't really think SoulWind can be considered a favourite for this tournament, but at the same time they've found a way to qualify for multiple STours and both OLTs this gen, so fundamentally I think you just have to assume they're going to win at least a little bit.
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Epilogue: my own completely irrelevant predicts:

Shiba vs RichardMillePlain
JustFranco vs zuzhouwawa
DugZa vs Star
mind gaming vs 691
MichaelderBeste2 vs Fogbound Lake
Skarpherim vs Colin
Fc vs Xiri
pdt vs SoulWind
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RichardMillePlain vs SoulWind
JustFranco vs Fc
DugZa vs Skarpherim
mind gaming vs MichaelderBeste2
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SoulWind vs mind gaming
JustFranco vs DugZa
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mind gaming vs DugZa
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