Smash World Tour Melee Begins: Central America Regional Finals Preview

By on August 27, 2021

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18 months ago, VGBootCamp shocked the Smash community by announcing the 2020 Smash World Tour, a year-long circuit for both Super Smash Bros Melee and Ultimate where players would accrue points for a shot at competing in an eventual World Championship in December 2020. Unfortunately, we all know this was never able to come to fruition due to the unexpected and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Somewhat quietly, VGBC relaunched the World Tour for 2021 earlier this year, with a new format based around online qualifiers for Ultimate and a committee selection for Melee, with both games holding regional finals that will feed into the 2021 SWT Finals. For Ultimate, the online qualifiers have been running for several months. But for Melee, this weekend we will get our first taste of the World Tour with the Central America Regional Finals.

This weekend we will see the 16 best players in Central America, selected by Melee Stats, compete for a mere two slots in the SWT Finals later this year. Central America will be one of the regions least represented in the finals. With 8 finalists coming from Europe, 8 from both regional divisions of North America, and 3 from East Asia, Central America only stands above Oceania, which will be fighting over just one finalist spot. The stakes for our Central American competitors could almost not be higher – they must place first or second this weekend to be invited to the Finals.

For the regional finals this weekend we will see a straightforward pools to bracket format, with the 16 players being broken into 4 round robin pools of 4. The top finishers of each pool will advance to Winners Semifinals, the second place finishers will advance to Losers Round 2 with a bye, and the third and fourth place finishers will begin in Losers Round 1. To earn an SWT Finals ticket, one must only win two sets in the Winners bracket; but, a player starting from Losers Round 1 will need to win 6 straight sets to be invited to the finals. Because of this, pools performances will go a long way in deciding who qualifies for the finals – an upset over a top seed in the round robin pools could set up the Winners bracket for a dark horse, while also destroying the chances of a Losers bracket run.

The Central American Regional Finals will be streamed on twitch.tv/vgbootcamp this Saturday, August 28th at 12:00PM to 8:00PM CDT and Sunday, August 29th at 12:00PM to 8:00PM CDT. More information and brackets are available at https://smash.gg/tournament/swt-central-america-melee-regional-finals/details



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