The 2023 World Championship is Korea!
On the 10th, Riot Games announced that the 2023 World Championship will be held in Korea in a completely different way through a video released 스포츠토토 ahead of the season kick-off event.
It is the Worlds Championship held in Korea for the first time in five years. Korea will host the World Championship for the third time until 2023 following 2014 and 2018. In 2014, the finale was held at the Seoul World Cup Stadium located in Sangam, Seoul, and in 2018, the final was held at Munhak Stadium in Incheon after passing through Seoul, Busan and Gwangju. Details such as the city and schedule of Worlds will be revealed later.
The Worlds method was also completely different from before. Until 2022, the play-in stage, the round of 16 were held as a group stage in a group stage pool league, and after the quarterfinals, a single elimination tournament was held with a best of 5 matches.
However, in 2023, double elimination will be applied to play-in, and the ‘Swiss Stage’ will be introduced to replace the group stage. The tournament stage, which starts from the quarterfinals, maintains the same single elimination system of best-of-five matches as before. Riot Games said it is making these changes with a focus on increasing the number of multiplayer games and providing more opportunities to compete.
22 teams have been confirmed for the 2023 World Championship. Of these, 21 teams are determined based on the number of seeds assigned to each region, while the 22nd team is determined through the World Championship Trial Series. In this selection match, the 4th seed from the EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) league LEC and the North American league LCS will compete in a best-of-five match, and the winning team will advance to the World Championship. Riot Games plans to expand this Qualifier Series to include more regions and teams in the future.
The winner of the World Championship Trial Series will participate from the Play-In Stage. The Play-In Stage consists of four teams, two from VCS (Vietnam) and PCS (Southeast Asia), and one team from LLA (Latin America), CBLOL (Brazil), and LJL (Japan), and one team that has passed the qualifying series. A total of 8 teams will compete.
These teams are divided into two groups of four to compete in the play-in stage with double elimination. Each group proceeds with a best-of-three double elimination, and the winner of one group determines the two teams that will advance to the ‘Swiss Stage’, where the winner of the loser group and the winner of the loser group will compete in the round of 16 in a best-of-five match. 스포츠토토
Four teams each from the LCK (Korea) and LPL (China), and three teams each from the LEC and LCS, will participate in Worlds and go directly to the Swiss stage. A total of 16 teams, including the 2 teams that passed the play-in stage, will compete in the Swiss stage. Consisting of 5 rounds, the stage is played in a Swiss round format. To put it simply, teams with the same number of wins and losses in each round compete against each other until they reach 3 wins or 3 losses.
The Swiss stage starts with teams randomly paired up with teams from other regions. Each team will play a one-out match, and the team that won 1 will be matched up with the other team that won 1, and the teams that recorded 1 loss will play against each other. After that, the team that won 2 wins will face each other with 2 wins, 2 losses against 2 losses, and 1 win and 1 loss will face each other with 1 win and 1 loss. The matchup, in which advance or elimination is confirmed, will be played in a best-of-three match, and the winning team will advance to the next round, the knockout stage.
The Swiss round is a way that only the truly strong can survive. Teams with the same score are matched against each other, so as the round progresses, there is a higher chance that teams with similar skills will meet. It is expected that it will be able to provide fun as a sufficient number of matches are guaranteed and a fierce confrontation for survival continues as the game progresses.
The knockout stage, which takes place after the quarterfinals, will be held as a single elimination tournament, best of 5 matches, as before.