The first teams have been eliminated from the 2019 League of Legends World Championship. Detonation FocusMe out of Japan and MAMMOTH out of Oceania finished third in their respective Play-In groups, knocking them out of the tournament. Clutch Gaming, Unicorns of Love, Splyce and Isurus Gaming move on to the Knockout Stage, where a best-of-five qualifies them to the Main Event.
DFM finished the Play-In Group Stage with a 1-3 record, the clear worst team in Group B. Their one win came over Splyce today off of a drawn out Nocturne-Galio engage composition and a strong performance on Gnar from Shunsuke “Evi” Murase. Otherwise, DFM struggled against Isurus and Splyce. They averaged the most deaths per game and the highest gold deficit at 15 minutes out of all the Play-In teams after Day 3.
MAMMOTH put up a much stronger fight in Group A. They finished 2-0 over Unicorns of Love and 0-2 to Clutch, but because Unicorns of Love had the 2-0 over Clutch, Group A found itself in a rock-paper-scissors scenario. They got seeded into tiebreakers based on who had the shortest game time. Therefore, Clutch auto-seeded to the second tiebreaker, while MAMMOTH and UOL played the first tiebreaker.
Unfortunately, UOL dominated the match over MAMMOTH, only allowing one kill, one Dragon, Rift Herald and two Turrets over the entire match. MAMMOTH fell behind 5,600 gold by 20 minutes, lost Baron and lost the subsequent fight. The OPL representatives head home after one of their better Play-In performances in recent memory.
Clutch took down UOL in the second tiebreaker match for first place in Group A. They won in similar fashion as UOL over MAMMOTH, gaining an 8,500 Gold lead by 20 minutes and securing Baron. Despite losing so harshly, Lev “Nomanz” Yakshin finished with the most Gold in the game on his signature Vladimir Mid Lane. In the end, Clutch moves into knockouts as a first seed and UOL gets second seed.
The final Play-In games for Groups C and D are tomorrow. Hong Kong Attitude, Lowkey Esports and MEGA each have 1-1 records, causing a three-way tie. DAMWON leads Group D with a 2-0 record, while Flamengo Esports is second at 1-1. Royal Youth is third with 0-2. These last few games will dictate the first and second seeds for the Knockout Stage. The Knockout Stage plays out October 7 and 8 to see which four teams move into the Main Event.
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