LCS Summer 2020 Playoffs Quarterfinals Review

The Playoffs Stage of LCS Summer 2020 is currently underway and the Quarterfinals were already played. In this article, I will take a brief look at the results and analyze what might happen next.

LCS Summer 2020 Quarterfinals

In total, there were 8 teams that qualified for the Quarterfinals of LCS Summer 2020. These teams were the following:

• Team Liquid
• Cloud9
• FlyQuest
• Team SoloMid
• Golden Guardians
• Evil Geniuses
• 100 Thieves
• Dignitas

Liquid and C9 were placed directly in the Semifinals. The next 4 teams were placed in the Quarterfinals while the final two were placed in the Lower Bracket, where they had to wait for the losers of the Quarterfinals.

First Quarterfinals Match

The first Quarterfinals match took place between FlyQuest and Evil Geniuses and it was much closer than it should have been. During the Group Stage, FlyQuest defeated EG twice and finished 3^rd overall. So it was quite surprising to see them struggle and require 5 games to end the match. It is true that they took a huge lead (2 – 0), but then they started to mess around and lost games 3 and 4. Luckily for them, a Graves + Mordekaiser strat came to their rescue in game 5 and they ended it under 30 minutes.

Second Quarterfinals Match

If the first Quarterfinals match almost turned into an upset, the second one surely did. And it wasn’t even close. In spite of having two of the most famous and experienced players in the world, Doublelift and Bjergsen, Team SoloMid got destroyed by Golden Guardians in 3 quick games. In the first two of them they went with the same trio: Lee Sin + Azir + Caitlyn. But GG had the perfect response and actually went for an identical strategy against this combo, with a slight variation. In the first game they used Mordekaiser while in the second one they used Gangplank. The other 4 champions stayed the same: Sett, Ziggs, Ashe, and Morgana. It turned out to be a very powerful combo and TSM got completely surprised by it.

Lower Bracket

After losing to FlyQuest and Golden Guardians respectively, Evil Geniuses and Team SoloMid went on to win their Lower Bracket matches with ease. Both of them ended with a score of 3 – 0 and we finally got to see these teams execute some coherent strategies.

Semifinals Predictions

It will be interesting to see what happens next, as Team Liquid prepares for Golden Guardians and Cloud9 gets ready for FlyQuest. In principle, Liquid should destroy GG, just as they already did in the Group Stage. Twice. As for Cloud9, they too are considerably stronger than their opponent. So I don’t see any upsets happening in this stage.

 

Photo credit: Riot Games