Tournament:EVO 2019

EVO 2019
Dates	August 2nd-4th, 2019
Venue	Mandalay Bay Events Center
Address/City	3950 S Las Vegas Blvd Las Vegas, Nevada
Attendance	3,534
Results
winners	MkLeo
Staff
Organizer(s)	Mr. Wizard, Bear, Ponder, inkblot, MarkMan

Evolution 2019, or simply EVO 2019, was the 18th edition of the Evolution Championship Series, a fighting game tournament held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. EVO 2019 took place on August 2nd to 4th, 2019, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. It was announced on February 26th, by EVO's tournament director Joey "Mr. Wizard" Cuellar, that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would make its debut as an official game on the EVO 2019 game lineup. While it was confirmed to replace Super Smash Bros. for Wii U if it released in time in 2018, this was the first EVO for Ultimate post-release. Notably, for the first time since EVO 2012, Super Smash Bros. Melee was not revealed to be in the lineup—although Melee was still present as a side event on August 3rd—making EVO 2019 the first one since 2014 to feature only one Smash game at EVO instead of two. Ultimate ran on version 3.1.0, rather than running on 4.0.0 with Hero, due to the update being released after the cutoff date for patches and being a few days before the tournament. This was the last EVO tournament in the United States to feature any Super Smash Bros. game, as Nintendo chose not to continue Smash events at EVO following EVO's acquisition by Sony in 2021.

It is currently the largest in person Smash tournament of all time, with 3,534 entrants signed up for Ultimate, and is considered one of the game's most prestigious tournaments.

Tournament summary

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Aside from being the first and currently only event to surpass 3,000 entrants, the event featured 37 of the top 50 players at the time, including 26 of the top 30 and 9 of the top 10. As such, EVO 2019 was the largest Ultimate event of its early metagame and remains one of the most difficult Ultimate events of all time, with no events matching or surpassing its top player count until Kagaribi 13 in 2025. Despite this prestige, the event received some criticism for leaving several notable players unseeded. The most egregious case was Chag, who, despite being considered among Mexico's top 10 at that time, received an "unseeded" seed of #3,515. Chag ultimately finished 33rd, winning several sets that would be considered major upsets without context, including his win over #59 seed JW, which had the highest upset factor of the event at 12. In addition, despite being the largest game at the entire event, there was only one official stream at the event; live updates and off-stream sets were eventually provided and shown by spectators such as Hungrybox and ZeRo. This issue did not hurt the tournament's viewership, which peaked at over 279,000 concurrent viewers during top 8, making it not only the most viewed Super Smash Bros. tournament in history, but also the most viewed EVO game at that time.

The Grand Finals set is often considered one of the greatest sets in Ultimate history, with the recording on YouTube receiving over 4 million views, making it the most-viewed Smash set of all time. The set pitted the top 2 players in the world at that time — MkLeo and Tweek — against each other. MkLeo entered Grand Finals on the Losers side, having been upset by #17 seed Kameme 0-2 very early in the Top 32 bracket but making a dominant Losers run where he dropped only 1 game to Maister. Conversely, Tweek had to win a close set against ProtoBanham in Top 32 and prevent a reverse 3-0 from Glutonny in Winners Finals to enter Grand Finals on the Winners side. Despite his tough bracket, Tweek was posed to win the event after winning the first 2 games and being up 3-stocks-to-1 on the 4th game. However, MkLeo performed a reverse-3 stock to steal the fourth game from Tweek, and after winning the final game to reset the bracket, MkLeo defeated Tweek 3-0 in the following set to win the entire event. This victory not only cemented MkLeo's #1 rank on the Spring 2019 PGRU, but also gave him a reputation for being nigh-untouchable. MkLeo's 3-stock comeback on the fourth game especially became iconic and is widely seen as one of the greatest comebacks in Ultimate history, beginning a trend that earned him the nickname "Game 4 Leo".

Although round 1 generally went as expected (expect perhaps with unseeded player Toski defeating #96 seed Tyroy 2-1), a few notable upsets occurred beginning in round 2, with #278 seed SK92 defeating #22 seed MuteAce 2-1, #230 seed Ronnichu defeating #27 seed Mr. E 2-0, #202 seed YMCA defeating #55 seed ven, and unseeded player 0mart defeating #77 seed Shoe, sending each into the loser's bracket. Round 3 was where many early eliminations began: #66 seed K9 was defeated by #274 seed thirsty, #54 seed LingLing was defeated by #108 seed varun, #40 seed Fatality was defeated by #120 seed MastaMario, and Mr. E was defeated by #59 seed JW, eliminating each at 129th. Multiple top 32 seeds were eliminated at 65th: #26 seed T by #122 seed Eim, #24 seed Dark Wizzy by MastaMario, #23 seed NAKAT by #119 seed Dragoomba, MuteAce by #70 seed Kome, #18 seed MVD by #34 seed Stroder, and most notably #9 seed Cosmos, who lost to #73 seed Shogun and #57 seed Larry Lurr, for his worst placement of the year. Other notable early exits were #12 seed VoiD, who lost to #76 seed Rotsuku and #44 seed Maister for 49th; and #14 seed Salem, who lost to #19 seed Nietono and #35 seed ScAtt for 33rd. #7 seed Nairo was the sole top 8 seed who lost before top 32, being sent into loser's by #39 seed Mr. R. This trend of upsets continued into top 32, where #3 seed Marss was notably defeated by Nietono and #11 seed Light for 13th. #21 seed Raito, who was on his strongest-ever Ultimate run, defeated both #5 seed Shuton and #4 seed Dabuz to make top 8 winner's side, both of whom were later eliminated by #10 seed zackray for 13th and Light for 9th, respectively.

Official Game Lineup

Finals	Game	Entrants	Pot Size
Sunday	Super Smash Bros. Ultimate	3,534	$35,340
Sunday	Tekken 7	1,899	$23,989
Sunday	Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition	1,951	$69,510
Sunday	BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle	646	$6,460
Saturday	Mortal Kombat 11	1,576	$30,670
Saturday	Samurai Shodown	1,729	$47,290
Saturday	Dragon Ball FighterZ	1,200	$12,000
Saturday	Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]	1,157	$11,570
Friday	Soulcalibur VI	746	$7,460

Results

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate singles

(3,534 entrants)
Top 32 Bracket
Top 8 Bracket

Place	Name	Character(s)	Earnings
1st	MkLeo		$21,204.00
2nd	Tweek		$7,068.00
3rd	Glutonny		$3,534.00
4th	Samsora		$1,413.60
5th	Raito		$706.80
5th	ProtoBanham		$706.80
7th	Zackray		$353.40
7th	Light		$353.40
9th	Abadango
9th	Kameme
9th	Nietono
9th	Dabuz
13th	ScAtt
13th	Mr.R
13th	Shuton
13th	Marss
17th	Shogun
17th	Pandarian
17th	HIKARU
17th	WaDi
17th	Elegant
17th	Nairo
17th	Plup
17th	Maister
25th	Vintendo
25th	ESAM
25th	Rotsuku
25th	Seven
25th	Sinji
25th	Stroder
25th	Myran
25th	kept
33rd	CaptainZack
33rd	ZAKI
33rd	Skilly
33rd	Masashi
33rd	Salem
33rd	Cyro
33rd	Dragoomba
33rd	Zenyou
33rd	Mao
33rd	Puppeh
33rd	MastaMario
33rd	Lea
33rd	Eim
33rd	Chag
33rd	Kome
33rd	Sparg0
49th	Atelier
49th	Flow
49th	Etsuji
49th	iStudying
49th	AC
49th	Prodigy
49th	Wizzrobe
49th	VoiD
49th	Lui$
49th	Larry Lurr
49th	Gackt
49th	Jw
49th	Mew2King
49th	Seth
49th	Javi
49th	Umeki
65th	Seagull Joe
65th	Ogey
65th	8BitMan
65th	CORONA17
65th	Cosmos
65th	Dark Wizzy
65th	Mada
65th	Frawg
65th	YMCA
65th	FOW
65th	Biddy
65th	MuteAce
65th	YOC
65th	Awestin
65th	PEW
65th	varun
65th	SexyBeast420
65th	RAIN
65th	sm0ke
65th	Nicko
65th	Logix
65th	SoulArts
65th	ANTi
65th	RFang
65th	huto
65th	NAKAT
65th	falln
65th	T
65th	Stronghold
65th	Phantom
65th	ZD
65th	MVD
97th	BreaD
97th	Lima
97th	takera
97th	Z
97th	MrConCon
97th	Heeew
97th	SS Rose
97th	Diamond D.
97th	Cheeks
97th	DD
97th	crow
97th	Wisdom
97th	EKING
97th	Duwang
97th	Brosinex
97th	Charliedaking
97th	Ozone
97th	Widget
97th	Mr.Newport
97th	Shoe
97th	Thirsty
97th	Death Arcana
97th	Osiris
97th	0mart
97th	LightningCam
97th	Denti
97th	Razo
97th	Zace
97th	Rickles
97th	Phoenix
97th	BassMage
97th	Konga

Side Events

Super Smash Bros. Melee singles

(111 entrants)
Top 4 Bracket

Place	Name	Character(s)	Earnings
1st	Hungrybox
2nd	ChuDat
3rd	Bungwipe
4th	dansdaman
5th	Zhea
5th	Cleps
7th	SK92
7th	Nainsoo
9th	Andymosity
9th	RAFADIL
9th	Bacon
9th	Woodchipdust

Trivia

• MkLeo won the largest cash prize for an Ultimate tournament at $21,204 until it was surpassed by Tweek making $47,739.60 at Smash Ultimate Summit 3.
• Series director Masahiro Sakurai watched the tournament, and although though he missed Grand Finals due to a meeting, he congratulated MkLeo after his victory.
• Due to flight issues, LeoN was unable to attend the tournament, where he was seeded to eventually face MkLeo. In what was dubbed by some as the "Bowser curse", none of the Bowser players that had their matches shown on the official EVO Twitch stream won their sets.
• Raito is the only returning player from EVO 2018 that placed Top 8 in the singles tournaments for both Smash 4 and Ultimate.
  • Coincidentally, this is also the second year in a row Dabuz placed just outside of Top 8 and got 9th for both games.
• After Mr.R lost to ProtoBanham, he pointed out that Proto had been looking at his phone in the middle of the set and asked if there was a ruling on it (due to the possibility of mid-set coaching, though Proto was apparently looking up kill combos for Inkling). After asking Bear (who helped direct the tournament), Bear told him that there was no such ruling and that the set was legitimate. Although some accused him of being a sore loser, he later confirmed on Twitter that he had no intention of replaying the set and was surprised that no such measure was put in place beforehand.
• Despite having kidney stones, which required him to miss Super Smash Con 2019 later on, ProtoBanham was able to place 5th at the tournament.
• With Mew2King and his Smash protégé Wizzrobe both placing 49th, Plup was the highest-placing player in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate singles that is otherwise known for being a professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player, placing 17th.
• In November 2018, Twitch streamer Ninja posted a now-infamous Tweet telling the Smash community that he had something planned for them. During a poker game with Ludwig on May 1st, 2022, Ninja alleged that the Tweet was referencing his plans on donating $500,000 to the EVO 2019 prize pool, however he was unable to go through with it due to a lack of communication from Nintendo.

External links

• EVO's website
• EVO's twitter
• EVO's Tournament Director twitter
• start.gg page
• Melee Side Event Start.gg page