With the two unbeaten teams through two weeks playing on Sunday, the first day of Week 3 was all about improving playoff positioning at the League Championship Series Summer Split on Saturday.
And nobody improved their position better than Cloud9. Entering the match at 1-1, Cloud9 topped Disguised 2-1 in a back-and-forth match, becoming the first team to reach 2-1 while sending Disguised to the bottom of the standings at 0-3.
The day’s other match was guaranteed to see a team emerge at 2-1 as Sentinels took on Shopify Rebellion, both entering play at 1-1. That match also went the full three maps, but Shopify rebounded from dropping the first map to win the next two and take the match.
The LCS Summer Split is an eight-team event that began July 25 and will run through the finals in October. The seven-week round-robin regular season — in which all teams play each other once in a best-of-three match — will set the field for the six-team playoffs.
The top two teams in the regular season will advance to the playoff semifinals, while the third- through sixth-place teams will advance to the quarters. The bottom two teams in the standings are eliminated.
The playoffs, which run Sept. 12 through Oct. 4, are best-of-five and double elimination. The top three teams will advance to the World Championships, played in New York, Los Angeles and Allen, Texas, from Oct. 15 through Nov. 14.
In Saturday’s first match, the team playing on blue won all three times, with Cloud9 taking the first and then the winner-take-all third map. Lee “Loki” Sang-min of South Korea was named MVP of the match, posting 16-6-20 kill-death-assist ratio. American Edward “Tactical” Ra was close behind with a 14-5-17.
American-born Australian Jett Michael “Srtty” Joye led Disguised with an 11-7-8.
In the second match, Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami — also born in Australia but competing in North America — led Shopify’s comeback and finished with a 14-7-13 K-D-A to earn MVP honors. Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam of the United States tallied only two kills in the match but added 27 assists in the win.
South Korea’s Cho “Rahel” Min-seong led Sentinels with a 15-5-12 K-D-A.
While Sunday will feature the lone 2-0 squads — Team Liquid and LYON — they will not face each other. Instead, LYON draws 0-2 Dignitas while Liquid plays 1-1 FlyQuest.
LCS Summer Split Standings
Place, Team (Match Record, Map Record)
T1. LYON (2-0, 4-0)
T1. Team Liquid (2-0, 4-0)
T3. Shopify Rebellion (2-1, 4-3)
T3. Cloud9 (2-1, 4-4)
5. FlyQuest (1-1, 2-2)
6. Sentinels (1-2, 3-5)
7. Dignitas (0-2, 2-4)
8. Disguised (0-3, 1-6)
–Field Level Media
