Upsets abound on Day 1 of SMITE and Paladins World Championships

The first day of the 2019 World Championship for both SMITE and Paladins is in the books, with the just four teams remaining in each bracket.

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Both World Championship brackets were single-elimination, meaning that the pressure to perform was higher than ever with just one loss sealing each team’s fate.

Despite the fairly standard affair of the Paladins quarterfinals, there was a pair of big upsets in the SMITE quarterfinals.

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The biggest upset across both games by far came during the day’s third match between eUnited and Trifecta. eUnited came into this tournament looking to repeat as champions, but the road was cut short almost immediately when Trifecta, a North American team that snuck into the World Championship through the qualifiers, did the unthinkable and eliminated eU.

Trifecta struck first in the best-of-3 series and even though eU managed to push the series to a third game, Trifecta were determined to walk away the victors and took out the World Champions in a 29-minute match.

That wasn’t the only upset of the day, however, as NRG Esports was taken out by Team RivaL, another team that got into the World Championship through the qualifiers. Despite being the second seed from Europe, NRG couldn’t prevent a convincing sweep from RivaL to close out the day.

• Read More: The brackets for the SMITE and Paladins World Championships

Dignitas opened the day with a fairly solid 2-1 win over Spacestation Gaming, while Splyce won a surprisingly close 2-0 series over Obey Alliance to round out the quarterfinal matches.

Dignitas will be up first again on Saturday to take on Splyce in the first semifinal, while Trifecta will look to continue their cinderella run against Team RivaL.

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While there were plenty of close matches over in the SMITE bracket, the Paladins quarterfinals featured a multitude of one-sided matches as the top seeds ruled the day.

Three of the four No. 1 seeds in attendance walked away with very convincing wins over their competition, with Kanga Esports being the only top seed to not advance into the semifinals.

• Read More: Cross-platform play and progression is coming to SMITE, Paladins, and Realm Royale

Natus Vincere – Europe’s top seed and defending World Champions – opened the day with a big 3-1 win over Virtus.pro, Team Envy – North America’s top seed – made easy work of Kanga Esports in a 3-0 sweep, and Spacestation Gaming – Brazil’s top seed – took down Ninja in Pyjamas 3-1 to close out the day.

Fnatic pulled off one of the more surprising results of the day, taking out North America’s No. 2 seed in G2 Esports in a quick 3-0 series despite being Europe’s No. 3 seed.

Na’Vi and Fnatic are set to face off in the first semifinal of the day, while Team Envy and Spacestation Gaming will battle for the final spot in the grand finals shortly after.

The semifinals for both SMITE and Paladins kick off at 8:15am PST / 11:15am EST. You can find all the matchups down below: 

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SMITE

Paladins 

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For everything you need to know about the SMITE and Paladin World Championships, be sure to check out our official hub with streams, brackets, and more.