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Worlds 2021, the Riot Gaming’s main esports event of the year in League of Legends, just started with the play-in stage. The matches in the 2021 World Championship — Play-In stage in Group A and Group B and some of the final tiebreaker rounds were also recently played.
The annual, tenth League of Legends Worlds championship event started on October 5 in the previously announced location — Iceland. The Worlds 2021 event will last for a month until November 6.
One of the major offline esports events in the world, and the biggest League of Legends tournament takes place in the Laugardalsholl Sport Center, which is located in Reykjavik. Top League of Legends teams compete for the overall prize pool of the 2021 World Championship of $2,225,000.
At the beginning of the major LAN event, Riot released and already showcased to the public a short opening video on YouTube:
The Worlds tournament’s play-in teaser, which is titled as “Worlds starts here”, introduces all of the current stage’s contenders at the Worlds 2021 international event.
Groups
Here are the current standings of both play-in groups at Worlds 2021, as well as the previously drawed main group stage groups:
Worlds 2021 Play-in groups:
| Group A | |
|---|---|
| LNG Esports (China) | 4-0 |
| Hanwha Life Esports (South Korea) | 3-1 |
| PEACE (Australia) | 2-2 |
| RED Canids (Brazil) | 1-3 |
| Infinity Esports (Costa Rica) | 0-4 |
| Group B | |
|---|---|
| DetonatioN FocusMe (Japan) | 3-1 |
| Cloud9 (United States) | 3-1 |
| Galatasaray Esports (Turkey) | 2-2 |
| Beyond Gaming (Taiwan) | 1-3 |
| Unicorns Of Love (Russia) | 1-3 |
Worlds 2021 Main event groups:
| Group A | |
|---|---|
| DAMWON Gaming (South Korea) | 0-0 |
| FunPlus Phoenix (China) | 0-0 |
| Rogue (EU) | 0-0 |
| TBD | 0-0 |
| Group B | |
|---|---|
| EDward Gaming (China) | 0-0 |
| 100 Thieves (United States) | 0-0 |
| T1 (South Korea) | 0-0 |
| TBD | 0-0 |
| Group C | |
|---|---|
| PSG Talon (Hong Kong) | 0-0 |
| Fnatic (EU) | 0-0 |
| Royal Never Give Up (China) | 0-0 |
| TBD | 0-0 |
| Group D | |
|---|---|
| MAD Lions (EU) | 0-0 |
| Gen.G Esports (South Korea) | 0-0 |
| Team Liquid (United States) | 0-0 |
| LNG Esports (China) | 0-0 |
Format
It was reported that Riot Games previously revealed all of the groups of the 2021 World Championship. The article also contains some of the detailed explanations about the Worlds 2021 rules and the overall event’s format.
According to the North American organizer’s rules, in the opening play-in stage of Worlds 2021, ten teams were divided into two groups and they played each other in a Bo1 series.
The first play-in round of the Worlds 2021 LoL tournament lasted for two days. Four teams qualify for the next stage of the tournament.
Two of the strongest competing LoL teams already won themselves a place in the next stage of the Iceland’s event — the main group stage of the Worlds 2021 tournament.
The remaining two slots are decided in the second play-in round, or the knockouts stage, which is concluded with the final matches on October 9.
We also previously reviewed most of the details of the latest League of Legends’ patch version 11.19 which is officially used at the Worlds 2021 event in Iceland.
LNG Esports
During the first play-in phase, the LNG Esports organization from China easily topped their respective group A. The strong Chinese League of Legends squad is known for their star jungler, Lee “Tarzan” Seung-yong. The famous 22-year-old Korean LoL player competed for local team Griffin before he was transferred to his new home in the LPL league.
The LNG Esports team placed fourth at the country’s main League of Legends league — the LPL Summer 2021, losing to EDward Gaming team in the lower bracket Bo5 match in the playoffs phase of the $650,000 event, which was organized by Tencent Games. The LNG Esports vs EDward Gaming matchup finished with a 1:3 score in favor of the second esports organization from China, which was founded back in 2013.
During the next event after the LPL Summer league, the following LPL Regional Finals 2021, the LNG Esports team started the tournament in the lower bracket and managed to grab the victories in two Bo5 series against the other strong squads such as Rare Atom and Team WE.
In the result, the LNG team earned the fourth slot for the Riot’s Worlds 2021 event from the region of China.
South Korea vs China
Coming to this day, the fourth Chinese League of Legends squad, LNG Esports, managed to not lose a single game out of their all four appearances on the world championship’s main stage during the initial play-in group stage.
The Chinese favorites scored four victories in the event’s first group A. With the perfect record on the scoreboard, the LNG squad did not need to participate in any of the upcoming tiebreaker series at the Worlds 2021 event.
In the first and actually the main highlight match of the group A, LNG Esports played their opening Worlds 2021 match against one of the toughest of the possible opponents. The Chinese team faced the fourth best Korean League of Legends team — Hanwha Life Esports squad.
The Hanwha Life Esports vs LNG Esports opening Bo1 series of the Worlds 2021 event was one of highly anticipated clashes of the two invariably best regions on the competitive League of Legends’ scene — Korea and China. This already sounded like one of the most interesting storylines for many of the League of Legends fans.
Speaking of storylines, one of the best ADC players in the world, the experienced Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu, who previously competed for world-renown LoL teams such as MVP Blue, Samsung Galaxy Blue, EDward Gaming, KT Rolster, and DRX, tried hard to carry the game on his Ezreal.
Despite the efforts of the 24-year-old bot player, the Korean LoL team could not finish the game against the Chinese opponents in their favor. The LNG Esports squad happened to have bottom lane priority with their powerful picks such as Miss Fortune and Rakan against the likes of Koreans’ Karma and Ezreal.
The Chinese top lane player, Hu “Ale” Jia-Le, was the main headliner of the match. His overfed Jax this game was far ahead in his matchup against the likes of the Hanwha Life Esports’ top laner on Irelia — Park “Morgan” Gi-tae. Ale’s Jax finished the game with the 6-0-8 score, while Korean Irelia died four times.
During a few of the teamfights, the Chinese Jax was easily diving the enemy backline and was pulling most of the Korean team on himself, while the opposing top player on Irelia could not keep up with the game’s pace and was not doing much at all in this match.
One of the most interesting matches in the first group lasted a little more than 40 minutes. The Chinese team destroyed 8 turrets against the opponent’s only 3 turret takedowns. The LNG Esports team’s objectives list also had one baron powerplay, and they also took two times more dragons than Koreans — 4 to 2.
LNG Esports had more than 12k gold advantage at the end of the match. The kill difference varied almost three times between the two opposing teams — 18 for LNG Esports versus only five kills on the scoreboard for the Korean Hanwha Life Esports squad.
Chinese domination
The next series of Bo1 matches for the Chinese LoL team seemed to be much easier than their opening duel versus Hanwha Life Esports team.
Unlike the 40 minutes-long game against the Korean opposition, the next match LNG Esports vs PEACE ended much quicker — in 24 minutes. The Australian League of Legends team simply did not have enough firepower to equally fight against the squad of LNG Esports.
On the next day of the play-in groups, the next four matches were played in the first group A. The LNG Esports vs RED Canids matchup ended also in favor of the Chinese squad. The Brazilian League of Legends team did not have much hope against the mighty Asians.
On the third day, LNG tea scored their fourth and final victory in the Riot world championship’s play-in group stage. The Infinity eSports vs LNG Esports game anticipatedly also ended in favor of the dominating Chinese LoL squad. The opposing League of Legends South American team from Costa Rica were unable to impose a fair fight against the likes of the LNG Esports squad.
The LNG Esports team finished the first phase of the Worlds 2021 event without losses and did not face much opposition from the opposing rosters. The Chinese, which were simply on another level compared to the other teams in the play-in stage, moved on directly to the main group stage of the 2021 World Championship in Iceland.
In the result, LNG Esports finished first in group A. The Koreans were second, as the Hanwha Life Esports team lost to the Chinese but won all of their other games. Teams PEACE and RED Canids were third and fourth in the group, respectively. Infinity placed last in group A and were out of the Riot’s annual championship.
DetonatioN FocusMe
The group B results were, in contrast to the first group play, sort of unexpected and even more interesting. The second group also featured exciting tiebreaker matches between the opposing LoL squads.
First of all, it is worth noting some of the great performances from the best Japanese League of Legends team — DetonatioN FocusMe. They became the first team to qualify for the Worlds 2021 main group event.
Being the part of the Tokyo-based multigaming esports organization DetonatioN Gaming, founded in 2012, and one of the first professional LoL teams in the Japanese region, DFM were previously part of for the League of Legends World Championship two times, in 2018 and 2019 seasons.
To get into the latest Worlds 2021 event, the Japanese DFM squad won the corresponding LJL series tournaments, such as the LJL Summer 2021 split and also the LJL Summer 2021 Playoffs event, which was held in September.
The DetonatioN FocusMe squad was also victorious in the previous series of this year’s main Japanese events in the competitive League of Legends landscape, such as the LJL Spring 2021 and LJL Spring 2021 Playoffs tournaments.
During the ongoing 2021 season, the DFM squad took part in the Riot’s second major event and world championship — the Mid-Season Invitational 2021, part of the yearly held MSI tournament series.
In the Mid-Season Invitational 2021 event in May, the DetonatioN FocusMe team placed third in group C of the event’s group stage. Group C was a really tough group and it consisted of world’s giants such as Korea’s DAMWON Gaming, who eventually placed second at the whole MSI event, and America’s hard to beat Cloud9 squad.
In one of the opening matches of the Worlds 2021 event, the DetonatioN FocusMe vs Unicorns Of Love matchup was the interesting battle of the two up-and-coming regions — CIS and Japan.
The mostly Russian roster of the European multigaming esports organization started their 2021 World Championship’s run from defeat. The DetonatioN FocusMe team outplayed the Russian-Ukrainian squad of the EU esports organization, and the Japanese moved on to the next match in their second play-in group B.
The DFM team played their next match on the same game day and faced their next opponents — the US’ Cloud9 team. The Cloud9 vs DetonatioN FocusMe Bo1 series ended in favor of the North American organization. This was the one and only game that Japanese managed to lose so far during the Worlds 2021 event.
The DetonatioN FocusMe vs Galatasaray Esports matchup was the rivalry between another two competing regions — Japan vs Turkey. The 27 minute match vs GS also ended in favor of the DFM squad.
The DFM team concluded their almost flawless group B run by beating the Beyond Gaming team from Taiwan, competing in the PCS region, who were the runners-up of both major regional tournaments — PCS Summer 2021 and PCS Spring 2021, where they lost to the PSG Talon team, the region’s best League of Legends team.
The DFM squad also replied and managed to win in their second meeting versus the C9 team in the second tiebreaker series.
In the final standings, team DetonatioN FocusMe placed first in the second Worlds 2021 play-in group. The Japanese LoL team was through to the next, main group event.
One of the other headliners of group B, America’s Cloud9 managed to place only second. The star US squad playing with Luka “Perkz” Perkovic managed to lose their last group match against the likes of the LCL Spring 2021 winners, who also previously qualified for the main group stage during the Worlds 2020 event — Unicorns of Love.
Tiebreakers
Team Hanwha Life Esports earlier moved on to the final tiebreaker round of the Worlds 2021 championship.
The Korean squad tomorrow meets the favorite of the Galatasaray Esports vs Beyond Gaming duel, which ended up being a lengthy Bo5 series and finished with the 3:2 score in favor of the Taiwanese esports organization. The Turkish team is officially out of the Worlds 2021 event.
The other teams from play-in group A faced each other in the first knockouts round — the PEACE vs RED Canids matchup was also a full Bo5 series and it ended with the close 3:2 score in favor of the second best team at the LCO Split 2 2021 tournament. The winner of the series meets the America’s hope tomorrow in the PEACE vs Cloud9 final tiebreaker match.
As mentioned previously, the US’s Cloud9 team lost their game in the second tiebreaker series round against the Japanese DFM squad, so they were waiting for their now revealed opponents — PEACE for the tomorrow’s decider.
The play-in phase finishes after the last matches of the second tiebreaker round at Worlds 2021, when the final qualification matches will be played between the remaining LoL squads.
First matchup of the day will be Cloud9 vs Australia’s PEACE, and second decider will be the abovementioned Korean team Hanwha Life Esports vs Beyond Gaming from Taiwan matchup. The final tiebreaker games start in less than 15 hours.