The first day of League of Legends’ all-new, experimental Swiss stage at the World Championship has wrapped up and the schedule for the second day is out. What’s new about the Swiss stage is that the schedule updates every day, with squads of equal record being drawn against one another until the teams with three wins qualify for the next round or the teams with three losses get eliminated.
With that in mind, that makes the end-of-day draws for the following day’s schedule just as intriguing as the matches themselves. And today, the draw for the second day of the Swiss stage lent itself to many intra-regional matches that League fans are already heavily dissecting before they even begin.
In a thread posted on the official League subreddit today, fans almost universally agreed the region that “won” the Swiss draw for the second day of the stage was EMEA, while the region that’s got the worst outlook moving forward is Korea—and we tend to agree.
For the LEC teams, BDS and Fnatic—despite losing their opening matches—still have favorable second-day games against MAD Lions and GAM Esports, respectively. G2, who won their first-day game, will face off against China’s fourth-seeded Weibo Gaming, another arguably favorable draw.
Korea’s unfavorability is exemplified by two self-cannibalizing, intra-regional matches: one between Gen.G and T1 on the 1-0 side of the draw, and another between KT and Dplus KIA on the 0-1 side.
Perhaps the most shocking outcome from the Swiss draw after the first day was that five intra-regional matchups were drawn into each other, forcing teams who are extremely familiar with each other from their time in the regular season to face off at Worlds.
Same-region matchups on Swiss day two
- NRG vs. Team Liquid (LCS)
- MAD Lions vs. BDS (LEC)
- Gen.G vs. T1 (LCK)
- JD Gaming vs. Bilibili Gaming (LPL)
- KT Rolster vs. Dplus KIA (LCK)
The most intriguing matchup of these five is easily KT Rolster vs. Dplus KIA, and it’s here that you’ll find Korean League fans’ disappointment coming to a boil. Both teams came into the tournament as likely candidates for the knockout stage, but after tomorrow’s match, one of them is guaranteed to be on the brink of elimination with a record of 0-2. Keep in mind that if you lose three matches in the Swiss stage, you’re out of the tournament altogether. In the regular season, KT held the advantage over Dplus by a margin of three matches to one (6-3 in individual games). Whoever loses that match will need to pull off the reverse sweep to end all reverse sweeps, winning three consecutive best-of-threes to keep their tournament hopes alive.
JD Gaming vs. Bilibili—which served as the final of the 2023 Mid-Season Invitational—also holds some weight to it. Those two teams have faced off against one another on seven occasions this season, with JDG winning all seven of those matches. In individual games, JDG holds a record of 19-5 against Bilibili in 2023. These two teams are extremely familiar with one another, and in a best-of-one scenario, we’re giving the edge to JDG.
If there’s any ounce of copium you can extract from the fact that there are five “civil wars” on day two of the Swiss stage, it’s that we’re less likely to see teams from the same region face off against one another in the best-of-three portion of the stage. After tomorrow’s matches, the tournament moves into a qualifying round, where teams who are on the brink of being eliminated or qualifying for the knockouts will transition from playing best-of-ones to best-of-threes. Since we’re getting more matches between domestic foes early on, our chances of seeing the same teams face off later in the Swiss stage decrease by proxy.
Worlds resumes tomorrow, Oct. 20 at 12am CT, with—you guessed it—an intra-regional matchup between NRG and Team Liquid.
Published: Oct 19, 2023 12:37 pm