As the LOL World Championship nears, GEN team caused a stir by unintentionally exposing their BP strategy. Following their victory, during a televised interview, the cameraman "accidentally" recorded the GEN coach’s BP strategy board. Despite the blur, the hero portraits were identifiable, leading many to think this might impact T1’s game versus IG.

The rumor that "GEN hates T1" originated from this incident. Although the BP was indeed leaked, it’s hardly GEN’s fault—it’s clearly a TV station mistake. They could have just blurred the footage during editing. As for whether this affects the play-in stage, I personally don’t think so, because patch 25.20 won’t be released until around the 10th. Also, the leaked BP was from GEN’s finals against HLE, which has little to do with T1.

Riot’s new rules face harsh resistance

Before this year’s World Championship even started, Riot has already been planning for next year. Previously, they announced the cancellation of the LTA region, reverting back to LCS and CBLOL. North America still retains three World Championship slots, and Brazil also secured one. Recently, Riot targeted the LEC region, with reports revealing plans to increase LEC’s slots to 12 and significantly reform the Winter Split, granting the champion direct entry to the Mid-Season Invitational.

This move by Riot triggered collective resistance from European clubs, because the two extra teams are not bought slots but free additions by Riot. This is obviously unfair to the existing 10 teams, all of whom purchased their spots. Especially KC, who struggled to enter the top league and had to create the Red Bull Cup themselves. Riot only allowed them into LEC after seeing the audience interest.

Knight tops the list of win rates against Korean teams

The biggest obstacle for LPL’s championship this year is still the LCK region. Recently, a netizen compiled statistics on the career win rates of players from the four LPL World Championship teams against LCK teams. Leftshark leads with a 29-25 record, a 53% win rate. Behind Knight are Bin and GALA, both with about 52%. Most other players fall between 40% and 50%.

Only three players have win rates below 40%. IG’s top laner TheShy has a 36% win rate with 7 wins and 12 losses. Top mid laner Xiaonaiyou holds a 34% win rate with 8 wins and 15 losses. At the bottom is BLG’s jungler Beichuan, with 0% in 3 matches (shut out by T1 at MSI). This is Beichuan’s first international tournament this year, having only faced T1. He still has a chance to raise his win rate at Worlds, provided he gets playtime.

Doinb reveals difficulty scheduling scrims

The LOL Asian Invitational is just three days away. Normally, teams would be scheduling scrims to prepare, but Doinb revealed on stream that apart from the three LPL teams, other regions aren’t taking it seriously and scrims are hard to arrange. It seems this "Nirvana World Championship" isn’t as intense as expected, with LCK and LCP teams likely treating it casually.

However, this is understandable since everyone’s focus is on the upcoming World Championship. Holding the Nirvana Cup now is awkward; without substantial prize money, teams from other regions probably wouldn’t participate. Plus, it’s only an exhibition match, so expectations should be low. As long as teams bring some entertaining lineups, it’s fine—after all, there are no quality matches during this off-season.

Conclusion:

The resistance from European clubs hasn’t had much effect; Riot continues its course stubbornly. This reform is indeed unfair to teams who spent a lot of money buying slots. However, more teams in the region will increase competition pressure in LEC, and maybe next year we’ll see one or two surprise dark horse teams emerge.

So, do you think the 0% win rate against Korean teams can be broken?

Feel free to leave your thoughts and discuss!