Now that the group stage has completed, only eight contestants remain in the face-off between the Europeans and Chinese.
After seven days of intense Hearthstone, the regions each have four players left in the fight for the $200.000 first prize, with the option to exchange that money for a brand new Ferrari. With the first prize drawing a stark contrast against the second prize - a not too shabby but still significantly less $10,000 - the remaining competitors have a day of rest, before continuing the battle on Friday, May 12th. On Firebat's Twitch channel the action commences at 04:30 EST / 10:30 CEST. Both regions will lose half of their players in the quarter finals, as cross-seeding the groups led to some guaranteed Hearthstone cannibalism.
Both groups concluded with some remarkable statistics. In Group A, dominated by BlizzCon 2016 attendee Zheng "OmegaZero" Ling, four players tied on a 3-4 match ratio, dueling for the fourth and final spot to make it to playoffs. After tiebreakers, however, it was Sebastian "Xixo" Bentert who came out on top, leaving fellow Europeans Jan "SuperJJ" Janssen and Dima "Rdu" Radu behind him. Group B had a less dramatic finish, though reigning world champion Pavel came out undefeated, boasting an incredible 7-0 record. Besides being the top seed of his group, Pavel "Pavel" Beltukov now also holds the all time high on our GosuRankings with 1471 points, 21 points above the previous record.