With KT Rolster officially out of the tournament, it can be said that this year’s World Championship is extremely tough for LCK representatives LCK even though they are competing on home soil. Notably, Gen.G was eliminated even before KT, meaning that the top two teams from LCK Summer 2023 have “bowed out”. Although they made it to game 5, Gen.G’s performance is clearly more unacceptable. They lost to the second seed of the LPL, and in fact, Bilibili Gaming wasn’t even the runner-up in the LPL this past Summer.
Recently, the legendary former AD Carry Uzi revealed some information about Gen.G. According to him, in scrims, Gen.G defeated JD Gaming 6 times without losing a single match. Interestingly, both JDG and Gen.G were once considered evenly matched and strong contenders for this year’s championship. However, only JDG remains in their journey now.
However, such scrim results have sparked debates among League of Legends fans. This is not the first time that scrim results have contrasted sharply with actual tournament outcomes. A notable example of this is Team Whales, who also had 6 wins against Weibo Gaming. Yet, they too were eliminated from Worlds 2023, even being crushed by GAM Esports.
According to a reasonable argument: “There’s information that LPL teams see scrims primarily as a way to test limits and lane skills. Therefore, they might play more cautiously and disciplined in actual matches.” Additionally, many opinions suggest that scrims may simply be a method for teams to experiment with new playstyles and identify their weaknesses to improve. Furthermore, it’s almost certain that no team will use their core strategies in scrims.
Moreover, scrims can also serve as a means for players to analyze and select champions that can be used in real matches rather than focusing on winning or losing. As a result, players might lose 10 scrim matches or more, but from those games, they could identify the best strategies for their actual competitive matches.