The League of Legends Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage kicked off with an exciting match between South Korea’s T1 and North America’s Team Liquid in a best-of-one game, showcasing the clash of these two major leagues.
T1 is coming in as LCK’s second seed via championship points. They finished second at LCK Spring and Summer playoffs 2023, and third at MSI 2023.
Team Liquid qualified after they finished third at LCS 2023 Championship after NRG Esports and Cloud9.
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T1 clinches first victory at Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage against Team Liquid
In the early game, T1 faced difficulties. They could not keep up with Hong “Pyosik” Chang-hyeon’s swift responses on Lee Sin in both the top and bot lanes.
As the game progressed into the mid and late game stages, Team Liquid made efforts to isolate and pick off T1 players, but found it challenging to bridge the gap in gold.
Following their successful takedown of the second Baron Nashor at the 30-minute mark, Team Liquid managed to catch up to the LCK team in terms of gold, evening it out.
Dragging on into the late game, there was no real winner in sight — until something significant developed in the midlane.
Team Liquid’s Park “Summit” Woo-tae, playing K’Sante, overextended, creating an opening for T1 to initiate a clash.
Summit ended up getting caught by Ryu “Keria” Min-seok’s Renata Glasc and subjected to a barrage of crowd control abilities from the rest of T1.
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But it wasn’t the dogpile on Summit that won them the fight. Just offscreen at the side, Lee “Gumayusi” Min-hyeong fired Ashe’s Enchanted Crystal Arrow, which hit Eain “APA” Stearns at the backline.
Because of this well-timed and precise arrow, he instantly made it a 4v5 in favor of T1 — and is the real unsung hero of this match
Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in’s Rell tried to help Summit, executing a three-man knock-up with Ferromancy: Crash Down, but it was too late: his AP carry was completely out of the fight. Team Liquid simply could not dish out enough damage to retaliate.
In a swift and coordinated move, the LCK team decimated almost all of Team Liquid’s members, with the exception of Summit, who was relentlessly pursued by Gumayusi until the very end.
Following this result, T1 clinched their initial victory in the Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage in 36:28. To move forward to the next stage, they require two additional wins to secure a spot in the Knockout Stage.
View the full Swiss Stage schedule and results here.
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