FACEIT has revealed that it’s making slight adjustments to the Valve Major format ahead of the upcoming London Major in September.
The $1 million London Major will contain a new system, called the Bucholz system, to seed teams based on their route through the Swiss Format. It’ll only apply to teams who play in 2-2 Swiss Format games, which are also now best-of-three matches instead of best-of-ones.
In the Swiss Format, teams either advance or are eliminated from an event based on whether they win three times or lose three times. Previously, teams were thrown into their 2-2 matches by random draw, with only one map to prevent elimination from the Major. Now the deciding Swiss Format matches will be much more rigorous because it’s best-of-three maps.
Related: Road to the FACEIT London Major: The format, schedule, and who’s qualified
An article from HLTV suggested the Bucholz system in April, and FACEIT CBO Michele Attisani liked the idea and pitched it to Valve. Valve supported the idea and now it’s implemented in the Major system. “There was a great article on HLTV about the Buchholz system as we were exploring different format options and we felt this was a great improvement,” Attisani said in a recent interview with HLTV.
This will theoretically eliminate good teams from pairing with other strong teams in later portions of a given Major stage. In the last Major, ELEAGUE Boston, there was controversy surrounding underdog CIS-region team Quantum Bellator Fire (now Winstrike) because they were given CIS counterpart AVANGAR in round five of the New Legend stage. The fact that there were much tougher teams—like Mousesports, Natus Vincere, Team Liquid, and Renegades—that could’ve paired with the two really struck a chord with fans, players, and personalities.
These new changes will be implemented in the first two stages of FACEIT London: the New Challenger Stage and the New Legend Stage. The New Challenger Stage will be from Sep. 5 to 9 and the New Legend stage will be from Sep. 12 to 16.
