Daejeon's Play-Ins opened on Sunday with two best-of-fives and a place in the upper bracket on the line. Four regions arrived. By the close, the bracket had already split into the comfortable and the cornered.
T1 never let Team Liquid settle
T1 won by closing the map before TL could open it. The pattern set in early and held across all three games: Oner reached every skirmish first, posting a 66.7% first-blood rate while Josedeodo sat on 0%, and that head start fed straight into a bot lane that gave TL nowhere to stand. in game one captured it best, diving again and again until the TL carry had no lane left to play. With the early map already conceded, Team Liquid needed their solo lanes to answer — and only one did. was never troubled by , punctuating game two with . Top lane was the lone bright spot: held firm against and even turned it around, handed awkward counterpicks like the game-one Yasuo into Gnar yet taking two solo kills out of the — a series that did plenty to dent his tank-only reputation.
