The conclusion of the ninth season of SLTV Star Series is right around the corner, and the time is short for the European participants that hope for a trip to Kiev. With Alliance and Empire leading by a small margin, anything can happen in the battle for top four.
The clock is ticking for the sixteen challengers of the European Division of SLTV Star Series Season IX. With less than seven days remaining to gather the points required for the ticket to Kiev, the competition is expected to be very fierce this week. So far, the top four is comprised of Alliance, Team Empire, Cloud9 and RoX.KIS, with the four teams being at least three points ahead of the remaining squads.
A quick glance at the tables reveals the current situation of the European division. The first place belongs to Alliance with 33 points, but having played all their games of the season, they cannot increase their lead. Theoretically, this means that many squads can challenge their position this week. Also, RoX.KIS and Cloud9 have three and four games ahead of them respectively, and currently sit in the top four with 27 points. This diminishes the chances of any squad with five or even four total defeats of reaching the top four. Any team with more than five loses cannot qualify for Kiev without any major contingency (like a teams forfeiting their positions).
For the fans of the Ukrainian squad Natus Vincere, this will be a joyful week, since there is a total of nine matches scheduled for Na'Vi. This is due to their mid-season obligations that caused many matches to be postponed. Depending on their results, the TI3 runner-ups and defending Star Series champions even have the chance to reach the first place of the table.
The matches will resume on April 2nd with Virtus.Pro facing Team Empire at 15.45 CET, and Na'Vi going against NEXT.Kz at 17:00 CET. Na'Vi will also be take on Cloud9 and MeetYourMakers at 18:15 and 19:30 CET, and the night will close with the battle between The Retry and Ahead Gaming. With both The Retry and Ahead being mathematically incapable of qualifying anymore, the match will have little impact on the leaderboard.
The table below will display the rankings sorted by number of losses (the fewest losses are leading). It can portray the standings more accurate than counting points, however a team will quickly drop if they lose a game.
| Team | Losses | Matches left | Lost against |
|---|---|---|---|
 Empire | 1 | 4 | NEXT |
 Na`Vi | 1 | 9 | Empire |
 Cloud9 | 2 | 4 | Empire, Sigma |
| RoX.KiS | 3 | 3 | Relax, Alliance, NEXT |
 Alliance | 4 | 0 | Cloud9, Na`Vi, Relax, Empire |
| Virtus.pro | 4 | 3 | Na`Vi, Fnatic, Alliance, RoX.KiS |
 Sigma | 5 | 2 | Ahead, Empire, Alliance, VP, RoX.KiS |
| Fnatic | 5 | 3 | Na`Vi, RoX.KiS, Alliance, Sigma, Cloud9 |
As can be seen above, the three teams in the qualifying seats are Empire, Na`Vi, Cloud9 and RoX.KiS. If RoX loses one more game however, they will lose the 4th place to Alliance. Alliance won the direct head-to-head versus them, hence why they would come out on top of there would be a tie. RoX.KiS have been doing really well lately but do secure the fourth place, they would have to win all their remaining three games. Unfortunately for them, those are against the top three teams; Empire, Na`Vi and Cloud9. They could also hope to create a threeway tie for fourth by beating one of the teams and then hoping for that team to lose enough matches to end at a total of four losses.
Live broadcasting of all the games will be provided by Beyond the Summit in English, Starladder.tv in Russian, and LGD.tv in Mandarin.
