Tomorrow, Friday November 7th, the Red Bull GIBAWAY JOURNEY begins. While the event does not appear especially notable in terms of teams or format, it has been called a “VRS lottery” by self-proclaimed VRS nerd Jesper “Udknud” Larsen on X.
Maximizing the VRS system
One undervalued part of the VRS system is how much LAN wins matter. VRS awards LAN points for wins played on LAN, regardless of the opponent. The points decay over time, but each LAN win is currently worth approximately 48 points.
When you get a LAN win while having none previously, you get the 48 points for the LAN win. But at the same time, all of the team’s past matches are recalculated using the (now) higher overall rating, and the teams’ H2H adjustment is moved in a negative direction.
That means the calculation of how many points a team can win over is not something feasable to do with just a calculator – it needs to be properly simulated.
A perfect VRS format
With six-team groups, a single round-robin of best-of-ones, and playoffs squeezed into two days, a team that goes the distance could record eight LAN wins in just two days.
Udknud uses BC.Game as an example in his post, and says they will “jump into top 30 easily” if they win all of their matches. In short: teams can win a ton of points if they have a good run at this tiny LAN event.
“VRS exploit,” or smart scheduling
Udknud calls this “the ultimate VRS ‘exploit’.” If other tournament organizers notice the effect, we could see more short LANs with similar formats, unless Valve adjusts the system.
As Udknud notes, this small Swedish LAN could be worth more than a BLAST Bounty in VRS terms, and it may influence invitations to IEM Krakow. That could in turn snowball into other big event invites.
A broader issue is coverage thresholds. Events only count from the point HLTV starts covering them. In theory, if only playoffs were covered, the maximum value would drop to three LAN wins, since only quarterfinals, semifinals, and the grand final would be eligible.
You can read Udknud’s post on X below here, where he explains it very well.
