North American Summer Split Finals coming to Toronto
Contents
Venue: The Air Canada Centre. Located in the South Core district of Downtown Toronto in Ontario, Canada, The Air Canada Centre (AAC) is a state-of-the-art arena. It is home to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Seating Capacity: The AAC can comfortably sit close to 20,000 people. With a size of 665,000 square feet, the AAC is considered one of the top ten busiest arenas in the world and the busiest in Canada.
Dates/Times:
August 27 (3rd place vs. 4th place) at ~3:00 PM EDT
August 28 (1st place vs. 2nd place) at ~3:00 PM EDT
The NA Summer Finals will begin immediately after the EU Summer Finals concludes (both will take place on the same day).
Stakes:
1st place – Will represent NA at Worlds 2016
2nd place – 90 points
3rd place – 70 points
4th place – 50 points
Teams: The top four teams from the NA LCS Summer Playoffs will partake in this event
Tickets: Ticket sales will begin in late June. Check the official League of Legends Esports site for more updates.
Kikis leaves G2 eSports
After FORG1VEN left Origen last week, it appears another player has left due to team dynamics issues. Mateusz ”Kikis” Szkudlarek has parted ways with G2 after being unable to reach agreement on playtime. Both parties have released public statements explaining the situation. First, we’ll cover G2’s angle.
G2 eSports was adamant this split that they would rotate two top laners between series. Dae-han “Expect” Ki is a young Korean talent that G2 is really high on, and they wanted to give him playing time right away. That didn’t sit well with Kikis, who felt he was being ultimately replaced.
For G2’s part, they are trying to facilitate a trade for Kikis. This is an official statement from their Facebook page:
“After discussing potential avenues with Kikis, we agreed that finding him a new team would be the best way for him to continue his career. As of today, we are open to discussing the transfer of Kikis to a team where he can continue to grow as a top laner or make a comeback as a jungler.”
Now for Kikis’ take on things. Kikis just released an official statement on Twitter and a lengthy post on Facebook explaining the situation:
It appears arrogance was one of the main issues that G2 had with Kikis. To his credit, Kikis even stated as much:
“After last split, there were some issues regarding me that I got informed about. I agreed, and made it my top priority to fix those issues for next split. The big issue is that there were a few times where I could come across as stubborn in some of the discussions after the game. Instead of acknowledging different opinions and trying to work on it properly together, I stuck to my my way of thinking and it impacted the team negatively.
Now, I’m a very proud player, and the guarantee of a starting spot means a lot to me. It shows that my team believes in me and this in turn it boosts my ability and confidence as a player. One big downside for me was that I was suffering from the lack of scrim time since Expect and me were sharing practice slots. I felt kind of undervalued despite making marked improvements on all the issues we identified together.”
In the end it feels like Kikis gave G2 an ultimatum – either pick him or Expect. Well, G2 picked Expect.
Was this the right move for G2? It’s too early to tell, but it wasn’t like Kikis was playing at his full potential this split. His -11.3 CS differential at 10 minutes was the second worst mark among all EU LCS players who have started more than four games.
We’ve only seen Expect play in one game so far this split, but he showed some potential. He went 8-7-5 while maintaining a 9.1 CS Per Minute average. That’s better than what we saw from Kikis in 7 games.
It seems this was brewing for quite some time (especially in scrims) and now a climax has been reached. Best of luck to Kikis as he continues to pursue his professional career.
Copenhagen Wolves shuts down all esport operations
Copenhagen Wolves, a once-promising organization that was a leader in both Counter-Strike and League of Legends, have ceased all operations. The announcement was made official through their Twitter and Facebook feeds:
Jakob Lund Kristensen, founder of Copenhagen Wolves, stated responsibilities with other esports organizations as the major reason for the move. This is an official statement from Copenhagen Wolves website:
“With both owners of the company fully engaged in other projects, Diglife with Ninjas in Pyjamas and me personally with Astralis, this decision seems to be the only one that really makes sense. We would have loved to keep this great brand alive, but with ownership so far removed from the daily grind we would never be able to provide our players, partners and fans the dedication they deserve.”
Copenhagen Wolves’ League of Legends team narrowly missed out on rejoining the EU LCS this split, losing in the Summer Promotion tournament to Giants Gaming.
In their prime, CW was a breeding ground for top talent. Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, Aleš “Freeze” Kněžínek, Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou, Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen, Karim “Airwaks” Benghalia, and Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider are just a few of the players that came up through CW and now have starting positions in the NA or EU LCS.
Apex jungler receives 10 month ban
Seo “Eve” Jun-cheol, former Apex starting jungler, has been banned for 10 months from competitive play. Hunter Leigh, a Riot employee, broke the news on Twitter:
Eve was caught scripting on the Korean servers through his Riot-approved practice account (yea that’s just asking for it). Scripting refers to using computer software that can automate play for you, allowing players to dodge enemy attacks in ways that would usually not be humanly possible.
The maximum punishment for scripting is a 20-month ban, but Eve received the minimum 10-month suspension in part because of his cooperation in the case and the minimal amount of time he spent scripting.
Before joining Apex, Eve played for Samsung Galaxy in Korea. Eve split time with Lee “Shrimp” Byeong-hoon as the team’s starting jungler in the North American Challenger Series. Shrimp has taken over as the team’s starting jungler in the NA LCS this split.
