The League of Legends World Championship quarterfinals concluded Monday with Korea’s Gen.G Esports dominating North America’s Cloud9 in a 3-0 sweep.
Coming into this series, Cloud9 was the last Western team alive in the tournament after escaping from Group A with the second seed. On the other hand, Gen.G survived a wild four-way tie in Group D to earn the first seed.
Game 1 saw Gen.G get ahead early, picking up kills to accrue a gold lead at 15 minutes, but they couldn’t grow it any further thanks to Cloud9’s team fighting composition making it hard for Gen.G to fight without their carries on full items.
Cloud9 fought back to swing a gold lead at 25 minutes, but couldn’t do much with the lead themselves before Gen.G clawed it back from them. Even though Cloud9 had secured a Cloud Soul, Gen.G’s two Barons and Elder Dragon ensured that Gen.G would go on to win in 42 minutes.
While Game 1 was close, Game 2 was nothing if not a stomp.
Gen.G mid laner Gwak “Bdd” Bo-seong continued to play at an elite level as Syndra, effectively winning the game for Gen.G by shutting down his lane opponent, C9’s Luka “Perkz” Perkovic’s Sylas. Bdd took advantage of Cloud9’s draft which saw the American side in two losing solo lane matchups, killing Perkz several times early on and roaming to unlock the rest of his team.
By the time Cloud9 was even in a position to try and fight back, Gen.G were too far ahead. Bdd finished with a 1-1-15 KDA (Kills-Deaths-Assists) as Gen.G went on to take Game 2 in 25 minutes.
With their backs against the wall, Cloud9 had a decent start to Game 3, building a 4,700-gold lead through early towers and kills. As the match went on, though, two things became clear: First, Gen.G was stacking Elemental Drakes with ease, and second, that Cloud9 couldn’t build on their lead while dodging constant poke from Bdd’s Zoe.
Eventually, Gen.G found a handful of fights in which Cloud9 bot laner Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen’s Miss Fortune died early, leading to Gen.G sweeping through the game with Mountain Soul in 34 minutes.
With this result, three Korean teams, DWG KIA, T1, and Gen.G Esports, along with China’s EDward Gaming, are the last teams standing at Worlds.
In the 2021 Worlds Main Event, 16 teams competed in four groups based on seeding, contesting a double round-robin of best-of-one matches in the Group Stage. The top two teams from each group advanced to the Knockout Stage, which consists of a single-elimination bracket.
Teams were randomly drawn for the Knockout Stage so that first-place teams will oppose second-place teams, with no two teams from the same group placed in the same half of the bracket.
Matches in the Knockout Stage are best-of-five all the way through the Nov. 6 grand final. The championship team will receive 22 percent of the total prize pool, which would equate to $489,500 based on the minimum guaranteed payout of $2,225,000.
The semifinals start Saturday with an explosive best-of-five matchup:
DWG KIA vs. T1
–Noah Waltzer, Field Level Media
