Valorant Champions Tour 2023, first tournament of the year LOCK:IN Sau Paulo Brazil format announced, big shocker!

On 17th January 2023, the format for the first international valorant event of 2023, which will also be the biggest tournament since the game's inception, LOCK:IN , Sau Paulo , Brazil, was announced. Many fans although liked this format, others, did not, and the majority seemed to be the latter. 

In this article, I shall explain the format in lay man's language for all the readers, and let us also check out what the Indian powerhouse Global Esports have in house for us. 

The tournament will begin on February 13th, with the 30 league teams, 10 from each region, Americas, Pacific and EMEA, and 2 invited teams from China, EDG and FPX. The total 32 teams have been divided into two huge groups of 16 teams. The group division is as follows : 
G1 : 
KOI
NRG
Detonation
Giants
GenG
LOUD
Funplus Phoenix
Karmine Corp
BBL Esports
DRX
Paper Rex
Cloud 9
Team Heretics
Evil Geniuses
MIBR
Talon Esports

G2:
Team Liquid
Team Secret
Natus Vincere
KRU Esports
Zeta Divison
Leviatan
Team Vitality
Global Esports
FUT Esports
Rex Regum Qeon
100 Thieves
Edward Gaming
SENTINELS
FNATIC
T1
FURIA

Both these groups, will go into a single elimination bracket, from which the top 2 teams from each group will qualify into the Final stage of the tournament. All these matches will be best of 3, and there shall be no room for error, considering that it is a single elimination bracket, and a loss means going home. 
The top 2 from each of the groups will battle it out in another single elimination bracket, but the twist here is that all the matches of this stage will be a best of 5. The region from which the winning team is, will get an extra slot for Masters 2023. 

Sounds exciting right? Well, No. Many coaches and fans expressed there disappointment in Riot Games, saying that this format is possibly the worst format for the first tournament of an year. The teams do not have any prior info on each other, and being single elimination, 16 teams will fly down to Brazil from all parts of the world, just to play one best of 3 and to go back again. While some argue that such do or die situationed matches will extract the best gameplay, making it an edge to edge fight, and super hyped for the fans, others argue that seeing there favorite team exit after playing just one series does not sound fair, and that there are other formats possible to make the tournament more fair, and not going past the time limit as well. 

We at EsportsNewsIN feel that any tournament, especially one which will be the biggest ever, should be fair for all teams participating. Considering that this is the first ever tournament of the Valorant League, and the fact that no team will have prior info on anybody, totally throwing out the concept of anti strating out of the window. Although we respect Riot's decision, we still feel that such format will suck out a lot of motivation from the teams, and some teams might even choose to save strats if there is a possibility that they will exit after 2 maps, and that there can be few other types of formats, such as the small group round robin format. 

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