This weekend, from July 24th to July 26th, we’ll see the end of the second season of the Halo Championship Season. It will also most likely be the last we’ll see of Halo 2 Anniversary, although you can never know for sure. Taking place about a month after the last relevant HCS event (the Online Cup at the beginning of this month awarded no HCS points), for many it might seem like there hasn’t been a lot going on and some may have even forgotten the state of the league before the elongated break. Hopefully here at eSports Guru we’ll be able to help you catch up!
As this is the finals for the entire season, only the top eight teams got to make it in. The seeding for the tournament was based on HCS points. The top 8 are as follows:
1. Evil Geniuses (2125 Points)
2. Denial eSports (1310 Points)
3. Winterfox (925 Points)
4. Counter Logic Gaming (800 Points)
5. Cloud9 (685 Points)
6. OpTic Gaming (425 Points)
7. Team Liquid (350 Points)
8. eXcellence Gaming (255 Points)
Honorable mentions go to Noble eSports, Reality Check and Vanquish Gaming who were just shy of making it into the top 8.
In between the solidification of the top 8 and now, we’ve seen two major online events, the HCS Open Cup and the second PGL 10K. Both tournaments did not have all the top HCS teams compete, the PGL tournament also had problematic seeding due to it being based on their gamebattles-esque ladder. The top three for the Online cup were Evil Geniuses, Winterfox and Denial eSports. On the other hand the PGL 10k featured a surprising upset with eXcellence Gaming taking first, Team Liquid second and finally Evil Geniuses rounding out the top 3 in 3rd. For the full results and analysis of this event you can check it out here on eSports Guru!
Outside of a few $200 online tournaments, with the only notable teams being Winterfox and Reality Check, this is essentially it for tournament play. With this in mind it will be interesting to see if eXcellence’s win in the PGL tournament will transfer over to LAN, as they have seen little success there in the past.
Based on seeding, it looks like the first and second rounds of the bracket will be: [EG vs eX] vs [CLG vs C9] and [Denial vs TL] vs [WFX vs OpTic]. The tournament is also double elimination.
Once again, the HCS Season 2 Finals take place from July 24th to July 26th at the ESL Studios in Burbank, California with the teams competing for $150,000. Remember to follow us here at eSports Guru for all the event coverage.
