On Sunday morning, the League of Legends finals of the MSI 2022 tournament took place in Busan. South Korean champions T1 narrowly lost to China’s RNG 2-3. After the match, the T1 coach had found a reason: the loss at the coin toss, which decided the side choice, was to blame. They had won RNG and thus also gained an advantage in the match, according to South Korean coach Choi “Polt” Seong-hun.
What decides the coin toss? As in soccer, the coin toss in LoL decides which side to choose. The winner of the pre-game coin toss has the choice of which side of the map to start on.
The Chinese of RNG chose the “blue” side – T1 had to play on “red” in Match 1.
After each match, the side is changed. Because the final was 5 games, RNG played match 1, 3 and 5 as “blue”. RNG won all of their games from the blue side.
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What is the difference between “blue” and “red”? There are some marginal differences in map design. But what is controversially discussed: For which side an attack on baron or dragon is safer or who can get his buffs better, depending on the side.
The main difference lies in the draft. Here it is decided which of the 5 out of 160 champions in LoL the teams will play:
Coach thinks T1 would have won if you played blue 3 times
The coach says: In a press conference after the final, T1 head coach Polt said:
The team that could choose a side always chose blue:
I believe the blue side brings advantages. We tried to prepare for the red side as much as possible but we couldn’t win the match.
When asked about the performance of their own players and the reasons for the defeat, Polt said:
The reason we lost, as I just said, was we weren’t allowed to play 3 times on the blue side.
Star player Faker doesn’t talk about “blue” and “red”. The three-time world champion said in his statement that while none of the RNG players stood out, he was also a bit disappointed with T1’s performance and wanted to focus on that.
LoL is not only known for its e-sports, but also for great cinematics:
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What did the opponents say? They were in a good mood. RNG’s midlaner Xiaohu says:
“The blue side can be OP and the red side too. Even in the players we lost on red, it was just our champion selection.”
The supporter Ming teases a little that the coach from T1 had previously shown himself to be so sure of victory:
“On Media Day, Polt said they would win 3-0, but actually only 3-1 because they lose the coin toss. I don’t know why he mentions that again.”
In fact, throughout the tournament, the blue side had a statistical advantage: blue won 53.2% of the time.
Coach faces criticism for draft
This is behind it: As a coach, Polt is responsible for his team’s draft. He was heavily criticized by fans for not banning the heroine “Gwen”, despite RNG’s top laner Bin picking every time and impressing in all of his team’s wins with her.
Some fans believe Polt only needed to ban Gwen to put T1 on the road to victory.
The head of T1, Joe Marsh, protects his coaches: They would draft together. That’s not the fault of the coaches (via twitter).
This is how Europe’s Team G2 processed their defeat.
G2 takes their own defeat lightly
By the way, G2 had the best reaction to a defeat: After being spanked by T1, people mocked: Riot Games announced that the match would be canceled because a horde of ducks had flown into the arena. G2 now has to face T1 in a basketball match.
On the one hand, this alludes to the short height of the Koreans, on the other hand to the “deletion” of 3 preliminary round games at RNG by Riot Games:
LoL: Riot cancels Team 3 wins – They shout “Unfair!”, take their frustration out on poor Brazilians