Photo Credit: LoL Esports

The quarterfinals proved to finally take some semblance of normality as all of the favored teams won their matches with relative ease to advance to the semifinals. Unfortunately for the four underdogs, their Worlds journey ended here and they will be forced to watch from the sidelines as the four remaining teams fight it out for a 40% share of the $4+ million prize pool.[1] Another thing to take away from the semifinals is that Korea has once again emerged has the premier League of Legends region and they have already guaranteed themselves at least one team in the finals.

Samsung Galaxy vs Cloud 9

Photo Credit: Youtube

Everyone remembers the Samsung White team who ran through Season 4 Worlds and took League of Legends by storm. After all of their members and Samsung Blue’s members left to go to China, the Samsung brand was forced to find new players to play for their team. After several mediocre runs in the LCK, Samsung barely slipped through the qualifiers as the third seed for Korea. However, they have looked miles ahead of their former selves as the team has been dominant throughout Worlds so far. Cloud9 were simply the next team on the chopping block for the Koreans as Samsung took three decisive victories over the last team from North America, crushing the hope of the home crowd. Cloud9 had some good plays, but they simply were outmatched in every category especially in their bottom lane who ended up with a total of 1 kill for the entire series.

SK Telecom T1 vs Royal Never Give Up

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Everyone thought that the series would be a breeze for SKT, especially considering their legacy of being the two-time world champions. However, RNG and in particular, Looper, came to the series ready to play and stunned the crowd by taking a hard-fought game one. Unfortunately for the Chinese/Korean team, their hype train derailed soon afterwards as SKT put on a clinic and showed why they were considered one of the most dangerous teams in the world. The next three games finished quite rapidly as SKT stormed through their opponents to win all of the games and crush any doubt about their lackluster performance in Game 1.

ROX Tigers vs Edward Gaming

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Going against the first seed from Korea must be an intimidating factor, especially a team such as the ROX Tigers. The Tigers began the first two games with a surgical approach as they removed the EDG players from the map with ease. It wasn’t until the third game that EDG put up significant resistance by winning several decisive team fights. Their lead got slowly chipped away at by ROX during the mid-game, but they were finally able to close out Game 3 with an ace, only losing two of their team members in the process. Game 4 went back to the status quo as ROX once against put on a clinic and demolished their opponents to comfortably take a 3-1 win.

H2K vs Albus Nox Luna

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The CIS team had gained a lot of fans with their straightforward philosophy on League of Legends and the charisma of their support, Likkrit. They had a miracle run to the quarterfinals, but their journey ended here as they met up against Europe’s H2K. The first two games had nothing much to talk about as ANX were torn apart across all three lanes by H2K and the game times reflected that as the first game finished before 35 minutes and the second game before 25 minutes. Game 3 proved to be a bit closer, but H2K were in no danger of actually losing the game until ANX tried a sneaky inhibitor rush in exchange for losing the Baron. Still, it was not to be for the CIS team and H2K closed out the series 3-0.

Semifinals

For the semifinals, the two Korean powerhouses, SKT and ROX will face each other while SSG and H2K will test each other on the rift. Both games should prove to be extremely close and in particular the SKT and ROX match should be exciting to watch as the two domestic rivals face off. It should be noted that while ROX does have the better regular season results for both summer and spring, they have never beaten SKT in a BO5 before, succumbing to them in the last Worlds.