With the group stage of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship in the books, only 48 participants in this year’s annual Worlds pick’em game still have perfect submissions. Last year, over 3,000 pick’em players still had perfect entries after the group stage, so to see such a low number before the knockout stage even begins is staggering.
The ridiculously low number of perfect pick’ems remaining can most likely be attributed to the unprecedented volume of games played at Worlds, as well as the highly improbable upsets that the tournament has already seen.
Many pick’em entries fell victim to the tournament’s biggest upset in FunPlus Phoenix. The LPL runners-up and 2019 world champions were heavily favored to make a deep run through the World Championship but finished last in Group A when they fell to the LEC’s Rogue in a winner-take-all tiebreaker. Additionally, teams like Fnatic, PSG Talon, and Team Liquid were favored by many to advance but ultimately fell short of other competitors’ accomplishments.
Plus, tiebreakers might have helped to complicate matters during the group stage since 54 total games were played during the main event’s initial stage—six of them being tiebreakers. This season, more tiebreaker games were played at Worlds than at any other past edition of the tournament. In Group D alone, three tiebreakers were played back-to-back to determine which teams would advance to the quarterfinals.
During the quarterfinals of the League World Championship, teams will play in a single-elimination bracket with best-of-five matches. Participants in the pick’em game are able to make their quarterfinal predictions now on Lolesports.com.
The quarterfinal round of the World Championship will begin on Oct. 22 when T1 take on Hanwha Life Esports in an all-LCK bout.
Make sure to follow us on YouTube for more esports news and analysis.
