So, for who I think will win it all. I'm thinking either SoulWind, or the winner of Tricking vs Tace in the potential 2nd round will take it all
Behold, the immaculate genius of someone who has never met any of these players (I'm currently 4/8, predicting Giannis, E.S., xray, and Ktut). All 3 of my winner picks are gone through the first round. Sorry to you 3 for jinxing. On to round 2 predictions, where I'll be even more wrong!
Giannis vs
Eternal Spirit - I really liked Eternal's round 1 showing against OTF, even despite hax in game 2. He had a difficult matchup against the specs Kyurem but played around it quite nicely in the SS, and has been able to use some less viable pokemon effectively, which is very strong, as most playesr do not account for those types of pokemon in their building. Conversely, Giannis, imo, barely scraped by in SM against Pohjis (granted there was a freeze), and did not play well in ORAS. Giannis is the first 1 seed to break the "Empo curse," in which the 1 seed loses to the 16th seed (should Bro Kappa have qualified for stour 31, I would have predicted him to win like Empo did in the stour after). In my opinion, Giannis is the more talented player, but I trust E.S. to win due to more consistent play across tiers.
Jytcampbell vs
Xray - Okay, so despite me not knowing who Jyt is, he defeated probably the best player in this pool in SoulWind. However, Xray destroyed INoLife in SM, AND missed
2 3 heat waves against Scizor and still got the dub in SS (due to the most cojones rapid spin of all time). I think Xray's ability do dominate and play through hax is telling of his ability to go far in the tournament, so he's my new winner pick (sorry, as I'm most likely cursing you :( ).
Skypenguin vs
Lusa - Both of these players defeated players who I expected to do quite well in the tournament. The difference, in my opinion, is perspective. Both of these players, funnily enough, used the same ORAS team. However, Tricking took Sky to gen 6 for some reason (since he's the best SM player out of the 16 qualifiers imo), and also seemed to have an "I am cursed" mentality. Lusa had a fantastic SS team (and apparently has beatiful building for him which can only help). To be completely frank, I think I underestimated both of these players, but I think I underestimated Lusa more.
Vileman vs
Ktutverde - There's a lot of Vileman hype, and for good reason as he defeated John W, while Ktut beat a sunny day Scolipede in round 1 (both players were lucky as well). However, I have to once again bold my round 1 pick in Ktutverde. This one, however, really can go either way. I think that analyzing the round 1 games is not particularly prudent for either player, so I just have to go with my gut.
In my opinion, I think all 8 of these players are of a similar enough skillset where any of them can win. If I had to predict one person to take the trophy, I would predict xray to finally grab his first pink, but knowing what happened last round, I'm hesitant to bold anyone as not to jinx them. Anyway, those were my round 2 predicts. Good luck to all of you! Enjoy!