The 2018 League Of Legends World Championships was packed with surprises and thrilling action and produced a genuine first with the triumph of Chinese team Invictus Gaming (IG).

IG dominated throughout the tournament and finally toppled the South Koreans to officially plant the Chinese flag at the summit of the League Of Legends world. That development has been long forecast and many eSports experts had predicted that 2018 would be the year of the Chinese. Those predictions were supported by the success of Royal Never Give Up (RNG) at the Mid-Season Invitational and ultimately IG claiming the big prize at the World Championship.

But while the theme of Chinese dominance was consistent, most eSports fans expected that it would be RNG rather than IG to reach the final, where it was expected they would meet Korean opposition, with the two leading Korean teams, KT Rolster and Gen.G the most likely finalists. But a tournament that had sprung some early surprises had a surprise finalist in European team Fnatic.

One of the biggest surprises came in qualifying. According to BigBetBookmakers.com, implied probability indicated that Kingzone Dragon X would be the likeliest winners of the World Championships, but they were knocked out by Gen.G in the Regional Finals.

Gen.G had been strongly tipped to do well in the tournament, but they endured a nightmare in the Group Stages losing five out of six matches to finish bottom of the section and crash out of the tournament. The other big Korean hope, K T Rolster, were knocked out by IG at the last eight stage, while China’s strongest team, RNG were downed 3-2 in the quarter-finals, by the second-ranked European team G2 Esports in what is one of the biggest shocks in the tournament’s history.

G2 Esports were unable to repeat their giant-killing performance in the semi-finals, where they were soundly beaten by IG, but top-rated European team Fnatic produced a convincing 3-0 victory over US team Cloud9 to reach the final. Having already beaten IG twice during the Group stage, Fnatic were live contenders to win the title, but in the event, IG stepped up their play when it mattered.

The dominant pairing of Mads ‘Broxah’ Brock-Pedersen and Gabriel ‘Bwipo’ Rau had enjoyed a successful tournament, but they were no match for IG, and Gao ‘Ning’ Zhen-Ning and Kang ‘TheShy’ Seung-lok established a clear edge over them. So dominant were the Chinese that Bwipo died eight times in the second game of the series and was replaced by Paul ‘sOAZ’ Boyer for Game Three.

But although IG were worthy winners, the other main headline from the tournament was the success of the European teams. In 2017, no European team made it past the quarter-finals, but this time, there were two European competitors in the semi-finals and another, Vitality almost made it out of an extremely tough group. As well as announcing the ascendancy of the Chinese, the 2018 World Championship also confirmed that the gap between East and West may be closing.

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