Welcome to Esports!

There’s nothing else that can bring too much excitement to a video game player than watching esports (Like League of Legends Worlds). Although still relatively new, there are no barriers for the audience that watches the competitions on streams. People from around the World, load up their favorite stream through different devices and watch the amazing plays from the pro players. With each year getting more revenue and recognition which in turn, increases the number of prices on their tournaments. Young people with less than 20 years can become millionaires just by playing the video game they love.

The barrier between actual “sports” and “esports” becomes blurrier with every event that passes by. Such events, like League of Legends Worlds, never fails to fill entire venues or stadiums. It seems like the crowd never misses expressing their reactions as the game progresses. Even though the streams you can hear their loud cheers when something amazing happens on the screen. And this tournament was not poor of such events.

League of Legends Worlds Tournament Price Pool

You thought I was joking about being a millionaire in such a short time? Well, let me tell you that the Initial Prize Pool for League of Legends Worlds is $2,250,000 USD (approx. € 1,950,734 EUR). This prize pool even goes higher with the addition of the Championship skins sales. Which means that you can support the esports community of League of Legends and having cool skins at the same time.

Of course, this is not the only tournament that League of Legends provides every year. And with the inclusion of the skins sales, a pro player can reach high amounts of incomes by winning different tournaments. At the same time, traveling across the World and meeting new places.

What it takes to Win the Tournament

As you can imagine, winning these types of tournaments is not easy at all. Imagine yourself being a Pro player for a moment. Now, you as a Pro player need to continue practicing the game for more than 8 hours a day. Watch replays from their possible adversaries and learning from their mistakes. When the day comes, and you have to perform flawlessly in a couple of matches to continue moving forward in the tournament. The chemistry with your teammates is critical in order to win. Another important thing that I forgot to mention is that you have to stick with the “Meta”. That means that you have to learn and master the champions with higher win rates. These champions can easily change with a new update.

Participating in League of Legends Worlds

Group Stage (Round 1)

Now you got yourself “lucky” and your team was able to obtain one spot in League of Legends Worlds. The team, mmm let’s call them. “The Smurfs” (heh). This amazing team is now competing in the tournament with other 23 teams. At first, 12 teams (including The Smurfs) will participate in a Group Stage (Round 1). The Smurfs will be established in one of the four groups (based on seeding). In your group, you’ll have to face every other team twice (best of one). Your winnings count as points and your team will need as many as it can get in order to continue participating in Worlds.

If your team was able to reach the top two of your group, the team advances to Round 2. This is called the Knockout Stage, were eight teams participate. The Smurfs team (that possibly reached the first spot in the group) is matched with the second place of a different group. In this case, the matches are best of five. If your team wins (no doubt about it), they advance to the Main Event.

Main Event (Group Stage – Round 2)

As before, your team is established in one of four groups (16 Teams in total). Matches are best of one and the team has to face every other adversary twice. Everyone can see The Smurfs in the main streams as they approach the main stage to fight for its survival. If your team wins, you get the chance to share your victory with the audience. This time again, the top two teams in every group advance further. The competition gets harder with every stage the team passes by, and the exhaustion tends to grow as each day that passes by.

Main Event (Knockout Stage)

The Smurfs are now in the last part of the League of Legends Worlds. By now you don’t see anything else but the first place for your team. Your fans cheer with every awesome play that the team makes and the spotlight is centered in “The Smurfs” all the time. In this part of the tournament, 8 teams are giving all that they got. Matches are best of five with single elimination. Which means that your team only has to face three other teams to win the tournament. It’s never easy at this stage though, only the top teams remain and you need to give it all (what is left of it) to win it all.

Now, let’s go back to the “present”. Because just in a couple of hours, the Knockout Stage for League of Legends Worlds 2018 is about to start and we certainly can’t wait to see what else the pros can show to us. It has been a rollercoaster of emotions as we see the amazing plays and how each team performs.

Therefore, taking that into consideration, let us recall some of the best moments that happened during the Group Stage (Round 2) for this year.

Group Stage

Group A

Group Highlights:

This group started with important winnings from Flash Wolves, their player Betty was able to perform a stunning play with Kai’Sa against Afreeca Freecs. They had the reputation of being a truly Korean threat but sadly this wasn’t enough. Still hanging in the tournament, they were able to draw with every other team but couldn’t win the tiebreaker, getting themselves disqualified by G2 Esports. At the same time, we were able to witness amazing plays like:
– PVB (BigKoro) Xayah vs G2. This, as we know, is one of the “Meta” carries, and in this match, we were able to see why Xayah has a great winning rate for this tournament.
– AFS (Kuro) Swain vs PVB. We saw how dominant can a middle player be if the player gets a lot of inspiration. Hence the need to help him farm in the lane.
– G2 (Wunder) Camille vs FW. In this particular match, Wunder was able to split push by himself as the enemy team was focused on killing the Baron, a huge mistake from FW. In order of seconds, Wunder was able to destroy the enemy Nexus without too much contest.

Group B

Group Highlights:

This group was the so-called “Group of the death” but it didn’t look that way. Especially because the “Defending World Champions” weren’t able to perform as it was expected. Nevertheless, this group was one (it not) that was packed with too many glorious plays from the pros. As we were able to see from the first day of this group, there were “Epic Plays” from Vitality. Their Player Jiizuke challenged the Meta by picking Ekko with the only purpose of total domination. Sadly, even with this amazing performance, Vitality lost the next epic games against C9.

We also had other amazing moments such as:
-RNG (Letme) Urgot vs VIT. We were able to witness how amazing Urgot can be it used right. In this match, this champion was able to withstand so much damage from different sources while returning some hurting as well.
-GEN only quick win vs C9 on Day 3. It was a little spark of hope from this Korean team, but after this game, nothing else clicked and kept losing.
-VIT counters RNG’s (Uzi) Kai’sa by ignoring the champion and kill the others on Day 5, but wasn’t enough to qualify for the next round.
– C9 dominating on the second round of the group, winning against every opponent.

A Tiebreaker was needed for this group, but just to differentiate the first and second team from the group. Even if one team lost this match (like C9 did) it wasn’t disqualified. Consequently, not much harm done.

Group C

Group Highlights:

This group can be considered as the “less loud” of them all. It didn’t have too many great plays from the pro players. But still got the action that represents the League of Legends Worlds. For example, if you want to learn about how to use Azir to its full potential. Look no further, as Scout from EDG got you covered. In the match that EDG had against Liquid, this champion was able to dominate the game. Another mid player took the spotlight when KT’s UCal created amazing plays with Swain against MAD. Lastly, this group didn’t need a Tiebreaker, since MAD flopped and Liquid couldn’t reach a good position on the table.

Group D

Group Highlights:

You can tell from the results that the group was dominated by Fnatic and IG. Both teams showed their amazing skill is every match they played, and they even lost one game between them. What we can highlight from this group is the performance of Fnatic’s Broxah. If you want to learn about the “jungle” position in League of Legends. This guy got you covered, especially when he got Lee Sin to play with. Outside of the matches, some polemic comments arose from the team 100 Thieves about their treatment towards their players. They lost good ones without a good reason, or simply left players on the bench when they needed some critical changes. Probably because of some management problems.

Likewise group “B”, they required a Tiebreaker just to obtain the first place on the group. From which Fnatic took over by winning the games.

Overall Impressions

League of Legends Worlds never misses impressing us all with the amazing plays the pros have shown. And as we can see from the total champion’s picks from the matches, is the variety towards the Meta. Especially in the top lane, where multiple champions with different characteristics can be seen. In contrast, this leaves a good impression, especially for the game. With future updates, we can hope that even more champions can be seen in pro tournaments.

With the results we got from the groups, we can easily see the dominance from China and Europe regions. The teams that belong to these regions gathered more winnings than loses and are among the top 8 teams. Furthermore, we can say that anything is possible in League of Legends Worlds, but there is a high percentage that either China or EU may take this tournament.

Last Stage of the Tournament

We can’t wait for the conclusion of the League of Legends Worlds. According to the brackets, would Fnatic or IG continue their dominance and win the tournament? Or C9, the only team from NA surprises us and takes the First Place? As I said, everything can happen in this tournament. Therefore, even if your favorite team of region wins or loses, there is no doubt that we will be entertained for the rest of League of Legends Worlds. May the best team take the title.

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