Arena of Valor International Championship 2019 playoffs to kick off on November 14th; features half a million dollar prize pool

Cover and thumbnail via Tencent Games

The Arena of Valor Championship 2019 or AIC 2019 will kick off on the 14th of November at the Garena Esports Studio in Thailand. The tournament features a whopping half-million-dollar prize pool, from which the winning team will get 200K USD. 12 teams took part in the group stages, which was completed earlier today. Out of these teams, 8 have qualified for the playoffs.

The Group Stage

The Group Stage saw teams from across the world divided into 2 groups of 6 teams each. In Group A, ASL(AOV Star League) Season 3 champions, Evos Esports barely managed to stay in the top 4, eliminating Korea’s Team Olympus on the back of the head to head tie-breaker system. Vietnam’s HTVC IGP and GCS Summer Champions, Hong Kong Attitude topped the group while ahq eSports club took third place.

2018 finalists Flash Gaming are currently the best-rated team, having won both AOG Winter and the AOV World Cup 2019 in recent months. However, the side were beaten to the top spot of Group B by Thailand’s Buriram Esports. This means that the following teams have been eliminated from the competition.

Team Olympus - South Korea

Nova Esports - Europe

Team AK - Chinna

Liyab Esports - Philippines  

The 8 remaining teams will now move onto the quarter-finals stage which will last from the 14th to the 17th of November. Each match will be a bo7 and unlike last year, the playoffs will be single elimination. The brackets for the playoffs are as follows: 

Image via @Liquipedia