The most dominant team in the League Championship Series this season played one of the most dominant games in the history the LCS yesterday. League-leading Alliance absolutely embarrassed their biggest rival, SK Gaming, pushing them to surrender at twenty minutes in the fastest game of the LCS this season.
Alliance started slow, but entered the midgame on a mission, tallying 11 kills in the final seven minutes of the match. When it was all said and done, Alliance posted 12 kills against zero deaths, with an 8,000 gold lead at 20 minutes.
SK Gaming surrendered at 20 minutes and 56 seconds. That’s the second-fastest game in the history of the LCS, behind a 19 minute and 53 second blitzkrieg in season three where Dignitas decimated Complexity by a score of 14 kills to zero.
While one match in LCS history might rival the stomping Alliance put on SK Gaming yesterday, the Alliance match was unprecedented in another way, and not just because it occurred at a time where the LCS competition is much higher.
In the Summer Split, no team had surrendered a match, until now.
Surrendering is a rarity in the LCS. Even teams with large leads can lose them quickly in the late game, where a big mistake can lead to a loss in the blink of an eye. With the stakes so high, why waste even the smallest chance to pull out a miracle victory?
This year in the LCS, only three games have ended in a surrender before an was inhibitor killed.
Yesterday’s match was one of them. But the other two were over thirty minutes long, games where a massive team fight wipe lead to the losing squad surrendering instead of watching the enemy team bulldoze their nexus with a respawn timer plastered on their screens.
This Alliance and SK Gaming meeting was different. This match is the only one in LCS history where a professional team looked at the scoreboard and decided to succumb to that infamous League of Legends catch phrase: surrender at 20. It’s the only one where a professional team of players felt they were so gone it wasn’t worth 10 more minutes of their time to pray for a miracle.
It was a statement game for Alliance. As one Reddit user put it before the match, “I’m a fan but it’s not like Alliance is forcing surrenders at twenty… It’s not an easy match.”
The result lowers SK Gaming to 10-7, putting them into a tie for second place with Fnatic, the first time they have not had sole possession of that spot all season. Despite the sentiments of marksman Adrian “CandyPanda” Wubbleman, who said in the pregame that SK would “get better” and “catch up” to Alliance as the season progresses, the team is heading backwards, falling further and further from their table topping Spring split.
Over the last month of play, SK Gaming is a below average 4-5. They’ve struggled against their closest competitors, Alliance, Fnatic, and Millenium. It seems Alliance captain Henrik “Froggen” Hansen had a better read on the situation.
“Compared to other teams they are not improving very much, honestly,” said Hansen. “It’s pretty weird with SK. They have been pretty good the whole split but I haven’t seen really much improvement in how they’ve been playing.”
Harsh words, but the results don’t lie. Especially results like this one.
