First eight Asian teams through to RMR closed qualifiers

The first Road to IEM Rio open qualifiers for Asia, Oceania, China, and the Middle East have finally concluded. The top two teams per region advanced to the their respective closed qualifiers, which are set to begin on August 27.

IHC and NKT scored the two closed qualifier spots in the Asia Open Qualifier. Garidmagnai “⁠bLitz⁠” Byambasuren and Erdenetsogt “⁠erkaSt⁠” Gantulga‘s squads completely dominated their spot-deciding matches and quickly fended off both D13 and ARAVT, respectively.

Over in the Oceania Open Qualifier it was Rooster and ORDER who claimed their closed stage berths after a hard-fought set of matches. Rooster won their series after Tynan “⁠TjP⁠” Purtell‘s monstrous 1.73 rating drove the team to an overtime victory against Morbin5, while ORDER fended off ENCORE in a fierce three-map contest to secure their spot in the closed qualifier.

JiJieHao International and Triple 6 are the pair of teams that bagged closed qualifier spots from the Middle East Open Qualifier. The Russian-Israeli squad breezed through their matchup against against InTheClub, while Triple 6 pulled off a thrilling comeback against Aseris in the second map to close the series.

Finally, in the China Open Qualifier, Rare Atom and Lynn Vision were the ones to triumph in their respective brackets. Zhuo “⁠advent⁠” Liang‘s side emerged victorious after a tough battle against Wings Up while Lynn Vision downed one of the favorites, TYLOO, en route to a closed qualifier spot.

The second batch of open qualifiers are set to run on August 20-21 and will determine the final pair of teams from each region advancing to the closed stage. From there, only one team each from Asia, Oceania, China, and the Middle East will make it through to the Asia RMR in October.

The first closed qualifier teams in their respective regions are:

Asia
IHC
Open Qualifier 2

NKT
Open Qualifier 2