The defeat of GAM Esports (GAM) at the MSI 2023 has truly shaken the Vietnamese League of Legends (LoL) scene. Not only because the yellow-and-black army is the reigning VCS champion with a 100% unbeaten record, but also because the team that directly “sent” GAM home was from a region considered even lower than the VCS – Movistar R7 (from the Latin America region).
Never having been ranked alongside VCS, R7’s victory is even more meaningful. It is true that they had two foreign players from LCK, but the efforts of R7 cannot be denied. Of course, GAM bears much of the responsibility since the poor performance of its players led the VCS representative to receive a shocking result.
Former coach Tinikun was one of the figures who followed GAM’s decisive match and made notable comments right after the match. Specifically, Coach Tinikun stated that Coach Ren had predicted the outcome of GAM at MSI this year. According to Coach Tinikun, Ren had repeatedly mentioned this to him and the SBTC Esports team as the VCS Spring 2023 approached its decisive phase.
Specifically, Coach Tinikun stated: “Ren predicted this. Ren noted that GAM often organizes attacks on lanes, taking advantage of the opponents’ impatience to execute their strategy. But Ren also said that in the global arena, GAM would lose if they continued to apply this strategy because world teams would not allow GAM to do so. Not to mention, GAM often ‘blind picks’ Lissandra. This will make GAM easy to read.”
Notably, Coach Tinikun also mentioned that Coach Ren is confident SE will achieve more than GAM if given the opportunity to compete on the international stage. Coach Tinikun remarked: “Ren also encourages SE to strive to win to go to MSI 2023. Ren knows it is not certain that SE will win, but he believes his team will perform better.”
But in reality, these are the comments from Coach Tinikun. Regarding GAM’s strategy, it is clear that they performed exactly as Coach Ren had previously assessed according to Coach Tinikun’s account. However, more importantly, SE could not even defeat GAM, to the extent that they were completely annihilated in the finals. Therefore, Coach Ren’s hypothesis only remains theoretical and cannot become a reality, at least in this MSI.
