Knight Dominates At Demacia Cup 2020, Top Esports Only Drops One Game
The annual Demacia Cup between the Chinese LPL and the South Korean LCK, usually run over the winter holidays, went another round between the two regions who have dominated League of Legends (LoL) esports over the last eight years. As such, Demacia Cup has become an appetiser of high-quality LoL play with a lot of rosters testing their new and improved post-World Championship rosters. This time was no different with highly-anticipated additions such as World Champion Jang "Nuguri" Ha-gwon showing themselves for the first time on his new team FPX. Vici Gaming’s new signing Chu "FoFo" Chun-Lan also turned some heads, getting a player of the match nomination in three of their matches in his first tournament for the team.
Moreover, fans were anticipating the return of the teams who had participated in the League of Legends World Championship 2020. These teams received a direct bye into the bracket stages of the event, allowing Suning, JD Gaming, LGD Gaming, and Top Esports to skip the group play portion of the event. Alongside them, FunPlus Phoenix, Vici Gaming, Victory Five, and Team WE made it into the quarterfinals.
Team WE surprises but Top Esports and knight steal the show
The Chinese organisation Team WE had a surprisingly strong showing around support player Lou "Missing" Yun-Feng who scored five MVP nominations in the 15 matches that the team had played over the week. Beating teams like Royal Never Give Up, Bilibili Gaming, and Invictus Gaming, the squad set themselves up for a dark horse run, also stomping LGD in the quarterfinals and narrowly squeaking by JDG to get into the Grand Finals of the event.
There they met the end boss in Zhuo "knight" Ding and his Top Esports who had only dropped one game (against Vici Gaming) throughout the entire event, even disposing of the augmented FunPlus Phoenix in a clean 3-0 with relative ease. In the final, Top Esports left little doubt that they were the best team playing that week, running a variety of compositions with knight but also bot laner Yu "JackeyLove" Wen-Bo as stand out players in the series. In just ten games, knight and top laner Bai "369" Jia-Hao played seven different champions while remaining on top of the competition (no pun intended) at all times.
Top Esports remains a scary team in the LPL going into 2021 with only their performance at the World Championship tainting their strong record of late. Team WE showed that after a long absence for the top ranks in China, they are a force to be reckoned with in 2021.
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