On Saturday, the MSI tournament in League of Legends ended. In the final, the two Chinese teams Bilibili Gaming and JD Gaming faced each other, with JDG winning this encounter without much resistance, demonstrating how strong China is in LoL.
How did JD Gaming perform?
- Round 1: JDG won 3:0 against GG
- Round 2: JDG won 3:0 against BLG, knocking the Chinese team into the Losers Bracket
- In the semifinals, JDG narrowly defeated the Korean star team T1 with 3:2
- After 3 victories, JDG is in the final
- In the Losers Bracket, BLG wins against G2 and GEN
- T1 and BLG then faced each other, and BLG won 3:1
- T1 thus lost against China for the second time in round 4
- Both Chinese teams then faced each other in the final, and JDG finished the tournament 3:1, leading their run through the tournament
JDG thus did not lose a single round, winning only 3 out of 15 matches played in this tournament. The team even won two rounds with a score of zero. Overall, the teams from Europe and the USA performed poorly and could not even play against each other.
What did JD Gaming win? The total prize pool of the MSI tournament was €231,000 (USD 250,000) and was distributed to the teams according to their placement.
JDG won 20 % of the pool for first place, amounting to nearly €46,000. The Chinese colleague BLG received nearly €35,000 (15 %), and T1 as the third-place team received nearly €28,000 (12 %). The remainder was then distributed among places 4 to 13 in descending order.
What is next? All teams must qualify for the Worlds in their regions. The League of Legends World Championship will take place from November 10, 2023, to November 19, 2023.
Following the performance of JDG and BLG, China is considered one of the favorites this year. In 2016, SKT1 became the first team to win both MSI and Worlds in the same season. Whether JDG can achieve this this year will be seen in November.
The winners of the Worlds traditionally receive a skin series in LoL a year later. A winner from last year manages to smuggle his favorite waifu from Honkai Impact into LoL with the new DRX skins.
