RRWC 2024 Recap, Halloween Edition
135 down, 82 to go
The Roulette Rivals World Championship is the most popular and prestigious event in the Hitman community, hosted by Frote7’s Speedrun Community. If you’re interested in the rules of roulette, check out the articles about the basics here.
Time is flying and the action doesn’t stop: as of Day 14, the afternoon of October 31st, more than half of the 200+ group stage matches have been played. Apart from one dropout and someone who’ll play his matches in November, 62 players have successfully begun their RRWC journeys, in the smoothest world championship yet.
A few players have completed all their matches, but even fewer are guaranteed to advance at this point. So let’s take a look at each group, what has happened so far, and who’s in the battle for the qualifying spots!
Group A - Title Defense On
We begin the recap in Group A, headlined by Frote7 and defending world champion TheTimeCube. Although the current point standings don’t reflect that, they are still the favorites to finish first and second. HOUSEN is currently leading the group, after losing to Vulcat and beating Qrescent7, his buffer should be enough to advance even if he doesn’t take a point from the top two seeds.
Vulcat’s group stage has already ended, with 18 points he’s historically not favored to advance. This means the battle for fourth place will likely come down between Qrescent7 and SovietDubov, which is a surprise resurgence from the latter. Despite an upset win against Frote7, Soviet’s path to a knockout stage is narrow and requires a sweep against AlexHiller; and at least six points against Qrescent7 and TheTimeCube combined.
The seventh-place playoff has already been played with AlexHiller scoring his first win over DeadlyMuffin_Man, while the likely first-place decider between TheTimeCube and Frote7 will be scheduled for the final weekend.
Matches to look out for:
TheTimeCube vs HOUSEN, October 31st 19:00 CET
SovietDubov vs Qrescent7
TheTimeCube vs Frote7
Group B - The Great Unkown
All other groups feature first seeds, who will either win their group or finish second at worst, with the possible exception of In4Fun in Group B. After 12 of 28 matches played (the worst percentage of all eight groups), the race is virtually tied for first among ThatObserver, graory, and In4Fun, with one point separating them after four matches.
The head-to-head matches of the higher seeds opened up this group the most: ThatObserver beat both graory and In4Fun, while the latter two tied each other. Other than Observer dropping a map to Pac, all three players have been perfect against the lower seeds, a vital component to winning the group here.
With wins over Pac and rookie Harmaa.-, Channel Reindeer is currently favored to finish fifth in this group, but why fifth if he’s currently fourth in the standings? That’s because Pigiero remains the last player yet to begin his 2024 campaign, scheduled to play his first match on November 1st. Fuzk will no doubt start scoring soon, picking up the fight with Channel, Harmaa, and Pac, but for any of them to advance, some serious upsets would need to happen.
Pigiero, and to a similar extent ThatObserver, have the group stage win in their own hands. If results continue to fall the expected way, their final match (and as it stands, the very last group stage match next Sunday at midnight) can decide the entire Top 4 of this group. Finally, there are extreme but not implausible scenarios where someone reaches 30 points but finishes fourth, surpassing TK47’s 29-point record from 2022.
Matches to look out for:
Pigiero vs In4Fun, November 5th 21:00 CET
Pigiero vs graory, November 8th 20:00 CET
ThatObserver vs Pigiero, November 9th 23:59 CET
Group C - The Unbeaten Favorite
Group C only has eight matches to go, so we have a clear picture of what’s still left to happen here. RR14 champion Scruffy is already done with his matches, completing a different group stage than last year. In 2023 he drew against Nezuko Chan, this time he won all seven of his games, but losing four maps in the process.
Following an upset win over Ducker, as well as three sweeps, the fate of the group win is in BigMachete’s hands: he needs to come away with 11 points against Camel and Cabben combined to secure first place. But the same two players, along with Ducker, are in a fight of their own for third and fourth place, so they’re unlikely to give in. Camel is one point ahead of Cabben, and five ahead of Ducker (who has one fewer match played), but they are all yet to play each other too: anyone can advance.
Although Dynaso has won two matches, including over his partner Crazy4Daisy, he’s currently tied with rupansansei; their match will most likely decide who finishes sixth.
Matches to look out for:
Dynaso vs rupansansei, November 1st 00:00 CET
BigMachete vs Camel, November 3rd 20:00 CET
Ducker vs Cabben, November 8th 18:00 CET
Group D - The Cat and the Dog
After two crucial matches in the last 24 hours, Group D is closest to completion with 22 of 28 games completed. While an earlier 0-6 loss to linux_penguin made it difficult, ChrisX3 found a way to advance with a narrow 4-2 victory over Phanium.
On the other side of this exciting match, Phanium ended his group stage with 32 points. With five wins and two losses, his fate is in lukedotpng’s hands, who has a 13-point gap to close in three matches: two sweeps and a point would make Luke the group winner.
In the final match before this report, zRune scored a necessary 6-0 sweep for his survival. After Chris’ 26th point was confirmed, only one place remained realistically open, and this double Haven tipped the scales from linux_penguin to zRune. In his final match against mikulers, zRune will need one point to overtake linux, and three points to cement himself in the top four.
Both Some Random Person and Ashton00122 are eliminated from the knockout stage, but they’re yet to play each other, so at least one of them should end this tough group with a victory.
Matches to look out for:
mikulers vs zRune, November 2nd 12:00 CET
Some Random Person vs Ashton00122, November 2nd 14:00 CET
mikulers vs lukedotpng
Group E - Chasing Perfection
Because not many of the higher seeds have played each other (see how the left side of the Results tab is empty), multiple players can have close-to-perfect group stages at this point. After beating the three bottom sweeps, ChannelJoined remains the only player who won all his maps in the tournament.
The group is led by Yannini, who scored 23 points in 4 matches, only leaving one map tie on the table. And although The Rieper 47 is tied third with 16 points, that’s also a respectable tally, only losing a map after already having played the fourth seed.
After a surprise loss to Fe3O2, Apricope is on the backfoot for any battle for first, but he’s still comfortably ahead of anyone fifth or below. Falcon, with two matches to go, already enjoys his most successful tournament to date, thanks to being 3-2 in his Haven Island picks, leading him to two 6-0 sweeps.
Fly4u has yet to play Apricope and bLULW, and two strong results might be enough for a surprise fourth-place finish. Fe3O2 will likely finish seventh, bLULW eighth, the latter after winning his first map in a Joker costume.
Matches to look out for:
Yannini vs The Rieper 47, November 2nd 20:00 CET
apricope vs Fly4u, November 3rd 17:00 CET
The Rieper 47 vs ChannelJoined, November 9th 19:00 CET
Group F - Seven, Deadly
Group F is now a group of seven, the only group to feature a dropout. After crossing out Dammchicu’s seven matches, everyone is at least halfway through their group stage. This year no group can be declared a group of death, but out of the contenders, Group F lived up to the expectations the most so far: at least two players will be eliminated from here, who would have an easier time advancing from other groups.
He may have lost his Mendoza winning streak of 14 spins, but Dein Nomos has found a way to win all his matches so far. With a seven-point lead, he’s in prime position to win the group but the other three spots are anyone’s guess. Both quatilyti and IlikeHitman have lost once and won twice (including over The_Buff_Guy), so when they eventually meet, they’ll likely be playing for second place in the group.
An unfortunate stat is shared by two Norwegians as OhShitMan and Hashashin47 have both finished fifth in three consecutive RRWC group stages. In his toughest group yet, Ohs was not favored by many but upset wins over quatilyti and The_Buff_Guy are keeping his knockout dreams alive.
The always-entertaining Redfox is on four points after three matches, which will likely only allow him to play the role of spoiler, but if everything clicks for him, he can still mount a gigantic comeback.
Matches to look out for:
OhShitMan vs Redfox, November 3rd 20:00 CET
Dein Nomos vs The_Buff_Guy
IlikeHitman vs quatilyti
Group G - Before the Storm
Group G has been fairly static for the last few days, thanks to Peter Dutton MP setting the stage with his seven matches played early. Last year’s surprise fourth-place qualifier is in an even better shape to advance from an even tougher group.
After 15/28 matches played in this group, it looks like a higher-than-average amount of points will be needed to advance. Some scenarios could still bump Dutton out of qualifying, but at least eight matches would need to fall a certain way for that to happen.
Enjoying an eight-point lead over davidredsox, undefeated Moo is the favorite to win this group. Yesterday’s 6-0 win against TK47 put david back into contention, although aphro and Alph still appear to have the upper hand. Sweeps against Rocky and gekko would put davidredsox on 24 points before his match against Alph, where he might not need anything more than a single map.
Rocky is unlikely to advance to his third knockout stage in a row but looks to finish as high as sixth in a full group of eight, ahead of TK47 and so far winless gekko, who’s about to play three of his remaining matches within little over 48 hours.
Matches to look out for:
Alph vs aphro, November 1st 15:00 CET
aphro vs Moo, November 4th 15:30 CET
Alph vs davidredsox, November 4th 20:00 CET
Group H - Three and Three
A bit of an opposite to the other groups, Group H’s battle for the top spots seems to have wrapped up already. Nezuko Chan, on his return to RR, scored an impressive 6-1, only losing to Music Inc early in the group stage. He not only defeated Jokerj but also overtook him on total points 32-28.
With their matches played, Nezuko and Joker simplified the math for Music Inc: he needs to score 18 points from four games to win Group H, a more-than-doable task for the RR15 runner-up.
Nezuko Chan has certainly advanced, and I haven’t found a scenario where Joker’s 28 points wouldn’t be enough. But fourth place is far from decided: Rommel, Curry, and Meekah can all reasonably claim the final qualifying spot.
Assuming Music Inc doesn’t lose another map and Max Masters remains winless, CurryMaker would have a four-point advantage over Meekah and six over Rommel with two matches to play. Because a regular win is only a two-point swing, both Meekah and Rommel would need to resort to sweeping one of their remaining matches, failing that, Curry could crawl across the finish line with one final map win.
Matches to look out for:
Rommel of the Far East vs ChromeX, November 1st 18:00
Music Inc vs Meekah
CurryMaker vs Meekah
Spectators can follow the results in several places inside and outside the Discord server. All scheduled matches appear on the HITMAPS main page, while detailed match results appear on the RRStats website and the community spreadsheet. The group stage will end on Saturday, November 9th, followed by the knockout stage draw the next day. The single-elimination race for the world championship will begin on Monday, November 11th.
The 2024 Roulette Rivals World Championship is held from October 18th to December 8th in Frote7’s Speedrun Community.