On Sunday morning, the finals of the MSI 2022 tournament took place at League of Legends in Busan. The South Korean champions T1 narrowly lost to the Chinese team RNG with a score of 2-3. After the match, the coach of T1 found a reason: The loss of the coin toss, which decided the side choice, was to blame. RNG had won that toss, thus gaining an advantage in the match, according to T1’s coach, Choi “Polt” Seong-hun.
What does the coin toss decide? Similar to football, the coin toss in LoL determines the side choice. The winner of the coin toss before the game gets to choose on which side of the map they will start.
The Chinese team RNG chose the “blue” side – T1 had to play on “Red” in Match 1.
After each match, the sides are switched. Since the finals went to 5 games, RNG played Matches 1, 3, and 5 as “blue”. RNG won all their games from the blue side.
What is the difference between “blue” and “red”? There are some marginal differences in the map design. However, what is controversially discussed is which side is safer for attacking Baron or Dragon and who can better access their buffs, depending on the side.
The main difference, however, lies in the draft. Here, it is decided which of the 5 out of 160 champions in LoL the teams will play:
- The “red” side starts by banning champions that the opponent cannot choose
- The “blue” side then gets to pick the first champions they want to play themselves
Coach believes T1 would have won if they had played “blue” 3 times
This is what the coach says: In a press conference after the finals, the head coach of T1, Polt, stated:
The team that could choose a side always chose blue:
I believe the blue side brings advantages. We tried to prepare for the red side as much as possible, but we could not win the match.
When asked about the performance of his players and reasons for the loss, Polt said:
The reason we lost was, as I just said: We were not allowed to play on the blue side 3 times.
Star player Faker does not talk about “blue” and “red”. The three-time world champion stated that although none of the RNG players stood out, he was somewhat disappointed with T1’s performance and wanted to focus on that.
LoL is not only known for its e-sports but also for great cinematics:
What did the opponents say? They were in good spirits. RNG’s mid laner, Xiaohu, said:
“The blue side can be OP and the red side can too. Even in the games we lost on red, it was only because of our champion selection.”
The supporter Ming also teased that the coach of T1 had been so confident about victory earlier:
“On media day, Polt said they would win 3-0, but actually only 3-1, because they lost the coin toss. I don’t even know why he mentioned that again.”
Indeed, throughout the tournament, the blue side had a statistical advantage: Blue won 53.2% of the time.
Coach criticized for draft
This is what it’s about: As a coach, Polt is responsible for his team’s draft. Fans heavily criticized him for not banning the champion “Gwen” even though RNG’s top laner, Bin, picked her every time and was able to convince with her in all of his team’s victories.
Some fans believe Polt should have just banned Gwen to lead T1 to victory.
The head of T1, Joe Marsh, defends his coaches: They draft together. It is not the coaches’ fault (via twitter).
G2 takes its defeat lightly
The best reaction to a defeat was actually from G2: They mocked after losing to T1, saying that Riot Games had announced that the match would be voided because a horde of ducks had invaded the venue. G2 now had to face T1 in a basketball match.
This alludes to both the small stature of the Koreans and the “cancellation” of 3 preliminary round games of RNG by Riot Games:
LoL: Riot voids team 3 wins – They shout “Unfair!” and vent their frustration on poor Brazilians
