Just five clairvoyant League of Legends esports fans have perfect Pick’ems remaining as the 2023 World Championship transitions from its Swiss to knockout stage.
These five League fans correctly picked which eight teams would advance out of the Worlds Swiss stage, as well as the two teams who would come out of the play-ins. Bonus points were also earned by them for predicting which team would emerge from the Swiss stage without dropping a match. Now, they have the chance to run the table and correctly predict the final seven matches of the tournament. Last season, no one had a perfect Pick’em as DRX busted everyone’s bracket en route to a world title.
Among the five big-brained geniuses who have perfect Pick’ems this year, four have made their picks for the next round—and they’re largely in agreement regarding who’s going to emerge from the quarterfinals. In the upper half of the bracket, each of them selected Gen.G to defeat Bilibili Gaming, while three of them took Weibo Gaming over NRG Esports. A similar split can be found in their picks for the lower half of the bracket, with each of them selecting JDG over KT Rolster, and three of the four taking T1 over LNG Esports.
Among those picks, Gen.G are the heaviest favorites with 94.5 percent of fans taking them to beat Bilibili. At this year’s Mid-Season Invitational, though, the results favored the underdog as Bilibili beat Gen.G 3-0 in the quarterfinal round.
The matchup with the most pick variance is Weibo vs. NRG. In that series, 74 percent of fans have Weibo coming out on top. But if NRG have proven anything this tournament, it’s that they should never be written off early. The NA squad have defied every expectation by extending their late-season magical run onto the international stage, and now, they’ve taken up the mantle of “the West’s last hope”—a title that many fans expected to bestow upon G2 Esports, who NRG handily beat in the Swiss stage.
If you’re interested in making your own picks for the Worlds 2023 quarterfinal round, you’ll have to do so quickly as submissions for the first match of the knockout stage will close in just a few hours. The first match of the bracket stage is scheduled for tomorrow, Nov. 2, with NRG Esports taking on Weibo Gaming.
Published: Nov 1, 2023 12:46 pm