OGN Group A: The Best Early Morning Soap Opera
For those of you that don't know the background on this situation I encourage you to look up how OGN works and the group stage point system and such before reading this. It's worth knowing anyway and other people could put it in better words than I (leaguepedia.com!)
More or less Group A contained KT Rolster Arrows, both SK Telecom T1 teams S and K, and new comers Prime Optimus who was considered by many to be one of the weakest teams in the 16 team tournament. KT Arrows upset Season 3 world champions SK T1 K and S took a game off of their sister team K as well placing the top 2 positions in the group as KT Arrows and SK T1 S. This meant that K were eliminated unless their sister team S somehow lost 0-2 to the "weak" Prime Optimus. Well, long story short, S lost 0-2 to Prime Optimus and during the tie breaker this morning K defeated S in a best of 1 to reclaim their spot in the playoffs.
After the shocking 0-2 lost to Prime Optimus many people (*cough* redditors *cough*) were claiming that S threw to get K a shot at the playoffs again. And now, as one might expect, people are saying the same thing with K's victory over S this morning. I'm going to give a couple of reasons why these claims of match-fixing seem unjustified to me. If I'm proven wrong in the future then so be it but from my understanding this just wasn't the case and here's why.
Reason 1: The games themselves
If you watch the games between PO and T1 S and have any knowledge of the competitive game at all you can see that PO simply outplayed T1 S. PO made plenty of mistakes but their big picture strategy to take the aggressive champions away from Marin clearly worked out for them. I honestly think this was simply a case of S fearing the public opinion of "there's no way they get 2-0'd" and once they lost the first game they just went on tilt. If you watch the best of 1 tie break between S and K you can see that K just banned out Marin's best and one of Horo's best and S just picked poorly. Ryze first rotation with Renekton banned and K's top laner not picked? Twisted Fate without K's mid-laner picked? (now Faker took Nidalee so this ended up not being that bad but its the thought process that counts) One could say that the picks/bans would signal some sort of collusion but the fact is that S has looked terrible in picks/bans throughout the season and are very vulnerable to the same problems they were earlier in the season when they were playing well. Their bad habits caught up to them.
Reason 2: End of season circuit points
The goal of most Korean teams isn't to win a split of Champions but rather to accrue enough circuit points to earn a spot at worlds (this is how Najin Black Sword got to worlds last year on 1 champions split win and 2 NLB wins). If people want to make the argument that SKT just wants K at worlds again (duh!) then one simply has to look at SKT T1 K's circuit points right now. K has 400 circuit points already on the year with their win in OGN Winter 2013. S has 10. If anything, K could afford the "season off" to get S some circuit points for SK Telecom to potentially get two teams to worlds. And let's be real here, T1 K would stomp their way through NLB to earn 75 points anyway. (they'd still be leading circuit points if that happened). If this was about getting a team to worlds, it would be more beneficial for SK Telecom to "get S some points."
Reason 3: Why would they even match-fix?
You could argue that SK Telecom is in possession of two of the top 8 Korean teams and maybe two of the top 10-15 teams on the planet. How is it beneficial to them to risk staining their name with a match fixing scandal. Not to mention, as I said in the last paragraph, if they really wanted to "keep their brand in the spotlight" then they would have had K throw to get S into the playoffs to get them a shot at some circuit points so they could potentially have two teams at worlds. It's not unheard of for match fixing to happen in Korean E-Sports (see the whole AHQ situation recently and Starcraft in the past) but I really don't see what's in it for SK Telecom. There isn't really any more money to be made by "getting K in" and I doubt they'd lose their sponsorships on K if they did happen to lose.
TL:DR - I really doubt there was any match fixing, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. I think S has just sucked recently and Prime had weeks to prepare for that match.
Predictions for OGN / NA + EU LCS
OGN Playoffs
Samsung Ozone vs SKT T1 K
K wins 3-2
This is a bit of a gut feeling prediction for me. The logical side of me says that K had a game Wednesday to get in and an important Masters match vs the KT Rolster organization (rematch with Arrows) on Friday. Their playoff match vs Ozone is Wednesday. Now Ozone has had a lot of time off comparatively and in the Korean league teams will often have a week or more to prep for a best of 5 not to mention they've been playing absolutely lights out. All of this gives Ozone a huge advantage and they're honestly the only team that I think can beat K in a best of 5. For all intents and purposes Ozone SHOULD win this series. That being said I just think this whole debacle to get K back into this playoff spot, Poohmandu returning, and recently uncharacteristic inconsistencies (key word uncharacteristic), something tells me the K snaps out of their recent funk after the scare of almost not making playoffs and becomes their old selves to win a hard fought best of 5. It wouldn't surprise me if Ozone won this series though as they've been the best team in Korea during this Spring season.
Samsung Blue vs CJ Frost
Blue wins 3-1
I simply think that, while Frost has been playing much better recently, Blue is the better team here. Dade is back to his pre-worlds form, Acorn has been red hot this season (leading top lane KDA), and Deft is really taking advantage of this caster ADC meta. Frost will once again continue their streak of top 8 appearances but it ends there.
KT Arrows vs CJ Blaze
Blaze 3-1
Flame is such a monster. Everyone knows it. And he's been in top form this season completely dominating almost everyone. Ambition has been one of the best mids on the planet (besides a bit last season) for seemingly forever and Emperor/Lustboy much like Deft is really benefiting from the caster ADC/bully support lane meta. I'm thinking more macro strategy here too. I think Blaze is the better team and while KT A have pulled off some crazy wins this season, they've mostly been using the element of surprise and hyper aggressive play. I think in a best of 5 this doesn't always work. The 4.5 patch changes I think affect this matchup the most as the heal buffs/ignite nerfs could change the bot lane matchups quite a bit.
Najin Shield vs KT Bullets
Shield wins 3-2
White Shield has been playing better and better as the season goes on and have really come into their own. They play excellently in team fights and in lane, against good teams and bad, and in early game and late. They're well rounded and performing consistently. Ggoong and Save have been outstanding this season. Even though Bullets dominated IEM they just haven't been playing well in OGN. Something seems off and I'm not sure what. I do think that Bullets has superior individual talent and if they can pull it together in clutch time this could turn into an "upset" but I'll stick with the consistency we've seen from Shield.
North American LCS
I won't go into full detail for each match on the bracket but I'll give the low down.
- CLG will beat Coast, then CLG will beat TSM
- Curse will beat Dignitas, then Curse will lose to Cloud 9
- Finals will be Cloud 9 vs CLG and Cloud 9 will win 3-0
- 3rd place: TSM
I'm just not sure anybody in NA can beat Cloud 9 in a best of 5. I think the CLG vs TSM series will be the one to watch in the playoffs and it wouldn't surprise me if TSM wins (they're the favorite) I just think the 4.5 patch changes will benefit CLG more (safer bot lane).
European LCS
EU is significantly more interesting to call. Honestly any one of these teams could win and just as EU was close during the entire season, I think it remains the same for the playoffs.
- Gambit will wake the hell up and beat Roccat (sad because I really like Overpow)
- Alliance has finally arrived to the form I thought they'd start the season with and will beat Wolves
- Alliance will also beat Fnatic. I think Fnatic is really tough to beat in a long series but this is a hunch
- Gambit will beat SK gaming
- Alliance will beat Gambit in the finals
- 3rd place: Fnatic
Those are my picks for the season. Some of them are more well thought out than others. I think OGN and EU are going to be really entertaining playoffs while NA will be relatively predictable. My next post will be about Patch 4.5 and how I, personally, am adapting to the changes for my own solo queue play.
Til next time!
-Gelati
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