Yeah def agree

I don't think c9 are massive underdogs vs SSG. I think they can do it but they have to play their S+ game. (C9 are still underdogs)

Koro1 starting for EDG because mouse went back to china because a family member passed away.

It's tricky, but I do think C9 are massive underdogs to win the best of five while at the same time being favorites to produce an early game lead in each game. They play a crisp, conservative early game but it turns sloppy and scared post 20 minutes or so. Vision junglers like Ambition and Bengi combined with strong mids like Crown and Faker heavily counter this since they'll almost never fall far enough behind for a team to win based on what they take in the first 20 minutes.

How C9 wins:

Impact on Kennen/Rumble
Meteos on Olaf/Zac/Rek'Sai/Skarner
Sneaky on Caitlyn/Jhin/Sivir
Smoothie on Alistar/Braum

How C9 loses:

Impact on Poppy/Gnar (He's played 5 games of Kennen/Rumble and just 1 game on Gnar so it looks like C9 understands this. They picked Gnar into Poppy/Lee/Ryze with Meteos on Nidalee jungle, Rumble would have been a bad pick there.)
Meteos on Lee Sin/Nidalee (These champions are very hard to play in the mid-late game and Meteos' best quality is finding safe ganks to feed his lanes in the early game.)
Smoothie on Karma/Bard/Nami (Meteos only goes for the super safe plays so a more aggressive initiator is needed to set up for the rest of the team. Again C9 seems to understand this as he's played 5 games of Alistar/Braum excepting the one weird Lee Sin/Karma first rotation versus the Flash Wolves.)
Sneaky on Ezreal (Sneaky has been a good and versatile ADC, but this is not his best champ. They ran Ezreal 3 times.)

I think SSG does have a great opportunity to ban out Smoothie and Impact. I think wasting any ban on the jungle pool is a mistake against C9. Syndra is a must ban on red side though.

SSG will 3-1

Here we go

I don't know, C9s Teamcomp just doesn't seem to be better any point of the game, maybe slightly better in the late.

top die

Ruler MVP.

This is a massacre

The most entertaining part so far is the massive piles of salt on Reddit because of the boos.

Edit: LOL USA chants get shut down by Cuvee instantly

RIP NA.

Pretty close games like expected.

Sneaky and Smoothie this series: 1/27/22

is...is that bad?

CuVee for God

Samsung is for real. I think they've got a legit shot against ROX/SKT

They got a gift bracket so extra prep time for the final

H2K will be tougher to beat. C9 individual talent sucks except for Impact

H2K at least has Ryu, Forgiven, Jankos

Did not expect c9 to get **** on that hard but I'm not that surprised it happened. I don't think h2k or anx stand a chance but will probably look better when they get destroyed.

Got out of work at 4 yesterday, went and grabbed some food then took the train down to the theater. The theater is like half a block from the train stop, so hooray for well-planned cities!



On my way up to the seats...



The SKT Cup! They had an area where you could take pictures with it, which was pretty cool. Surprisingly not as mobbed as I would expect.



Had pretty great seats. Because of the size of the theater, I feel like most people who were further back or up in the balcony couldn't see the players on stage. We had a good view of them, but honestly there's not much to see.



PapaSmithy giving a solid Monte and DoA shoutout during the pre-broadcast.



The players right as they're loading into Game 1. The screens that show the champions are the most insanely bright, hi-res screens I've ever seen. They almost look like they feature colors that shouldn't exist, they're very cool looking in person.


At this point, my phone died so I didn't get many pics. Overall reflections:

-Cool to be there in person, but honestly it doesn't do a ton for me. It was fun to yell and cheer at video games and be in an environment where that's not only accepted, but encouraged. But as far as a live viewing experience, you're just not watching anything different than on the stream. I thought it was cool that the announcers were broadcast live in the studio and even could interact with the crowd mid-match, that's an interesting thing I've never been to before.

-Way less cosplay than I expected to see. I'd imagine very few of the true professionals are gonna come out to Chicago just for this, but I expected to see a few more costumes. There was one Annie that I saw but that was it.

-Crowd was kind of deflated after Game 1 and C9 just never gave them a reason to get back into it. They do things with the lights, like the entire arena goes purple when baron is taken, and the lights go up when someone gets a kill, but I feel like they could do more in this arena. Like I think it'd be cool to have some interaction with some ults, like if there's a Nocturne ult, take all the lights down, or have the entire crowd go red when Rek'sai ults, stuff like that.


-Overall the experience was all right. Not something I'd clear my schedule for, but if they came back to Chicago for another round I'd go if I had a night free.

How does it working with the tickets? You don't really know for what matches you are getting tickets for, right? The whole system just seems like a huge crapshoot, if you are lucky you get a good quarters, if you are unlucky you get C9 vs SSG.

I think semis are gonna be good though, SKT vs Rox and H2k vs SSG should both be solid matches. Don't see SSG stomping H2k as Jankos >>> Meteos and H2k botlane >>>>>> C9 botlane. Doubt ANX is gonna take a game off H2k, considering how good H2k looked and that ANX players are sick and can't scrim that much and that Bo5 is different than Bo1 groupstage.

Yeah I just ordered tickets for the Thursday session because it was the only one I could make. Total crapshoot as far as what matchup I got.

C9 got absolutely rolled CuVee was lights out vs Impact.

Pumped for tonights matchup. SKTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

I think this aspect was pretty interesting. I thought Impact was laning really well against CuVee untill he took him by surprise by going after him despite losing in CS or having a lane that shouldnt win. I feel like in the west laners roll over because they have a bad matchup or being down in CS but CuVee did the opposite and crushed impact. Thats outplaying in its finest and i hope that the western laners recognize this and actually start thinking this way because it creates alot more interesting scenarios. This is imo a big problem for the LCS teams that they play risk averse so that they dont lose instead of looking for spots to win.

People here have said that for a long time here. People rather lose 3 inhibs and lose than take that one fight you need or you lose anyway.