JD Gaming start LPL Summer with a defeat

JD Gaming were the most dominant team of the first half of the season. They won LPL Spring and then they went on to win MSI 2023. These two results clearly proved that they’re one step ahead of everyone else, including South Korean giants like T1.

But, as it often happens in esports, JDG likely took a long break after winning MSI and as soon as the Summer Split began, one of their regional competitors took advantage of this. In fact, JDG nearly lost the second match of the split as well, but were just good enough to win 2-1.

JDG’s defeat

The team that managed to defeat in their opening match of LPL Summer 2023 was Weibo Gaming. This team finished LPL Spring in 5^th-6^th place, which means it’s not exactly one of the underdogs.

In regions like China, the skill difference between the best competitors in the league is relatively small. So a match between the 1^st and 6^th ranked teams can go either way.

In game 1, Weibo drafted champions like Aphelios, Vi, and Syndra, while JDG relied on their signature Jayce. Their win rate with this champion is enormous, but what they didn’t consider was the overall composition that they needed to fight into.

The battle was extremely one-sided and the final kill score was 14-1 in favor of Weibo. Needless to say, the gold difference became insurmountable very quickly and after just 26 minutes, Weibo won. The final gold difference was nearly 11.000.

In game 2, the battle was not as one-sided but Weibo still won relatively easily. The two teams played very methodically and farmed a lot, which is why the game lasted nearly 34 minutes. But whenever a fight occurred, Weibo won without too many problems. The final kill score here was 15-5 in their favor. The gold difference was more than 5000.

Other LPL Summer results

Overall, LPL Summer 2023 started with a lot of interesting matches but also with massive upsets. Ultra Prime, the team that finished last in LPL Spring with a record of 3 W – 13 L, are now leading with two consecutive wins.

EDward Gaming, who only lost three matches in LPL Spring, have already registered a defeat in their first two battles. The only other team that won the first two matches was Bilibili Gaming. This was completely expected, given that Bilibili was the second-best team in the world at MSI and in LPL Spring.

Header: Riot Games