MANILA—A Filipino team gets a shot for world esports championship glory after Odd Man Out made it to the knockout phase of the Pokemon Unite World Championship.
OMO, known for the event as OMO Abyssinian, qualified for the playoffs after dominating their group stage assignments on Friday at the Pacifico Yokohama National Convention Hall.
OMO Abyssinian, made up of JM Liban, Luis Felizarte, Michael Vaughn Ocio, Joshua De Leon, and Daryl Maghanoy, first defeated American club Team YT, 2-0, before sweeping Thai outfit UD Vessuwan by the same scoreline to rule Group F.
OMO Abyssinian is one of only two teams that completely swept their group stage assignments, the other being Peru, which went 6-0 in total games played in Group A en route to a 3-0 record.
Meanwhile, action in Group B ended in a wild manner as Chinese Taipei's Orangutan, Indonesia's RRQ, and Europe's Nouns all finished with identical 2-1 records.
In the end, though, Orangutan emerged on top of Group B after they forced a Game 3 against Nouns in their series, which was enough to win the tiebreaker with a 5-2 record in games played.
RRQ and Nouns only tallied four game wins each.
The other teams that ruled the group stages are 00 Nation of Brazil (Group C), Akjil of South Korea (Group D), Luminosity of the United States (Group G), and MJK (Group E) and Oyasumi Macro (Group H) of host country Japan.
OMO will take on 00 Nation in the upper bracket quarterfinals at 9:15 a.m. Saturday (Philippine Time).
Meanwhile, the other Filipino team in the field, Old Boys-Kumu, finished second behind Oyasumi Macro in Group H with a 1-1 record.
Old Boys-Kumu beat Mexico's Entity 7, 2-1, to seal the split in their group stage assignments after getting swept by Oyasumi Macro.
Old Boys-Kumu eventually took the second spot after Oyasumi Macro beat Entity 7, 2-1, in the last tie for Group H.
Old Boys-Kumu will play in classification games also on Saturday to decide which team will finish ninth in the tournament, although all the competing teams in the said matches will take home US$7,500 (around PHP524,000) each.
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