Measuring the VRS Impact of FRAG Blocktober as fnatic secure final Major spot

The final StarLadder Budapest Major spot was decided on U.S soil, more specifically at the very own Fragadelphia Blocktober! fnatic took down 9INE in an emotional best-of-five finals despite being behind on the scoreboard twice, and will return to the Major after missing Austin this year.

See how much impact Fragadelphia Blocktober had on the Valve Regional Standings (VRS) below.

The easiest way to explain what happened is that Fragadelphia Blocktober ended up becoming a tournament like the old Regional Major Ranking (RMR) event after fnatic, 9INE, OG, and ECSTATIC made the top four.

From that moment on, the last Major slot in the EU was going to be decided by the winner of Fragadelphia Blocktober.

9INE were actually in front of fnatic in the VRS until that match (22nd and 23rd, respectively).

But, as fnatic beat them in the finals, they won 16 VRS points and climbed to 22nd, whereas 9INE lost 15 points and fell to 24th.

Below, you can see exactly how much impact Fragadelphia Blocktober had on VRS. It shows that 9INE had more points than fnatic, but according to the official Valve ranking released on October 6th, fnatic are in 21st with 1451 points, whereas 9INE are in 25th with 1416 points.

Even though Fragadelphia Blocktober had this much impact on the Major race, VRS specialists such as Finn "Mischief" Farrer and Jesper "Udknud" Larsen, said that this was quite unusual and that we'll likely not see the Major race go down to the wire once again.

"You will never see this clean a situation again with VRS directly deciding invites," Udknud said. "It's much more likely next time that it will all be settled well in advance or maybe end up in a scenario too complex to easily understand."

Unfortunately, the way things panned out showed that if teams like Wildcard or SkinRave had made a deep run in FRAG Blocktober, they'd gain enough VRS points to qualify for the Major as well, in one of the Americas' slots.

The invites for the StarLadder Budapest Major will be officially announced this Wednesday, October 8th.