The 2020 LCS Summer Split Playoffs has started and we are getting close to seeing the top two teams in action.
Both Team Liquid and Cloud9 are getting ready to play their first playoffs matches after the opening round has concluded. The first round of games had a surprising upset, as Golden Guardians swept Team SoloMid 3-0 while FlyQuest won their match as expected.
As the first seed, Liquid got the opportunity to pick their opponent for the upper bracket round 2. A dominant win over TSM didn’t seem to frighten Liquid, who picked Tanner “Damonte” Damonte and his GGS teammates as their opponents. C9 will be meeting FlyQuest, an opponent that they are probably satisfied with after beating them twice in the split.
Liquid and C9 will be the obvious favorites going into their respective matches, but there might be a chance for surprises.
Can Golden Guardians take down LCS first seed Team Liquid?
Golden Guardians is going into the next match with a lot of confidence after taking down TSM in such a convincing fashion. They have proven throughout the split that they can beat any team in the LCS when they are at their best, but they have needed greater consistency.
Liquid finished the split in first place, but many of their wins were not convincing. While Liquid has improved immensely since the spring split, they still need to show that they can win clean games against some of the better teams in the league, and Golden Guardians might just be the right opponent for that.
Liquid is known to play a slow and controlled style, but with the ability to take action in the early game if Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen gets off to a good start.
Golden Guardians knows how to get ahead early through their lanes and snowball the lead. Can “Closer” Çelik has been the key for the team’s early game success, and now he will have the chance to prove himself against a worlds finalist jungler.
For Golden Guardians to win, the team will have to get its key players on comfortable champions and play aggressively in the early game. They don’t want to play the scaling game with Liquid since they will most likely lose that battle. The team will need to snowball through the mid lane while Victor “FBI” Huang and Choi “Huhi” Jae-hyun do what they do best, which is dominating the lane. If they succeed in that, we might have a close series on our hands.
Will FlyQuest get revenge against Cloud9?
The match between C9 and FlyQuest seems like a one-sided affair on paper, but the recent struggles of C9 might make this series closer. The two teams met in the 2020 LCS Spring Split finals, where C9 swept FlyQuest with a convincing 3-0 after a dominating split as a whole.
This split, it seemed like C9 would repeat their spring performance, but the last weeks of the regular split didn’t go as expected. C9 still managed to secure the second seed, but for the first time this year, they seem beatable.
FlyQuest had a very different split, as they started out very poorly before turning things around when Jason “WildTurtle” Tran came back to the team, finishing the split on a six-game winning streak. FlyQuest also seemed ready to cruise their way through the first round of the playoffs against Evil Geniuses, but the series ended up being very close. FlyQuest won the first two games convincingly, but then their performance took a turn. Luckily, Lucas “Santorin” Larsen was on fire and carried his troops to victory.
FlyQuest has not won a single game against C9 this year, which makes it seem like a hard series for them. With that said, the recent performance of C9 might be enough for FlyQuest to produce an upset. They will still have to bring their best game and snowball through the top side of the map to stand a chance. Santorin vs. Robert “Blaber” Huang will be the big match to keep an eye on. Both players have had a great split, so there is no doubt that these players could be the deciding factors.
