I didn't realize I hadn't blogged, I thought I had been blogging.
OH WELL.
Anyway, today was the first day of Worlds.
Of the six matches today, only two went a different way than I'd have thought, and three matches (not the same ones mind you) didn't go the way I wanted them to.
In group B, I expected FPX to win; they did not. I am sticking to my "China is overrated" opinion--but in spite of that, I still think FPX take second in the group, with Splyce being first in it. (My exact order for the group was Splyce FPX GAM and then JTeam. This was just a wild guess, tho now it seems like maybe it'll be JTeam third GAM fourth.) They weren't someone I really cared to see win tho so I'm not upset about their loss.
In group C, both matches went exactly the way I expected them to go. I expected SKT to smash Fnatic; I expected RNG to smash Clutch. This happens to be the group where 2/3 of the matches I was hoping would go differently come from tho, because while I rated the teams as SKT-Fnatic-RNG (Fnatic-RNG was a tossup where I almost put RNG as second)-Clutch, I am rooting for Fnatic and Clutch so while their losses were disappointing, unfortunately, they weren't surprising.
In group D, the match that didn't go as I expected it to happens to also be the match which didn't go the way I wanted it to. I expected Damwon to smash TL, and wanted them to. (See also, I anti-root for TL and actively want them to lose.) Invictus took an unsurprising win. I ranked the teams as Damwon-Invictus-TL-ahq, and that's the order I want them to be in and there's still a fair chance that's precisely the order they will be in. It only takes IG beating TL tomorrow in a hyped-up rematch. If IG beats TL and Damwon beats IG then at worst there's a threeway rock paper scissors and at best it means Damwon had a bad game and will smash the competition whereas IG will continue to perform.
So there's still a rather considerable chance the group plays out as I expected it to, which also happens to be the way I want it to.
For the record, again, group A whose games are tomorrow, I said G2-Griffon-Cloud9-Hong Kong Attitude.
To talk about tomorrow's matches--in SKT versus RNG, SKT wins. In TL versus Invictus, well, the only matches I caught today (I'll watch the rebroadcast) were the ending of FPX's match and the entirety of Splyce's match, so I haven't seen either the Invictus or the TL match. From my understanding, neither Invictus's win nor TL's win were very convincing tho I did pick up mixed signals there, is hard for me to really tell because I only got snippets and the conversation there was confusing. When I view the matches on the rebroadcast I'll have a better feel for who's got the edge there.
Without any thought, I'd favor Invictus; that happens to also be who I want. But again, if Invictus really-sucked and TL only-kinda-sucked, then that stance of the prediction might change. Or if Invictus only kinda sucked and TL really sucked, then it'd be strengthened. I might give a blog update later which is literally just me saying what my stance is once I see their games.
Griffon versus G2 is going to be the match to watch. I don't know who will win. G2 might be the best team in the world--might be. Might. But if G2 isn't the best team in the world, Griffon is a real contender for that title. I'll say that if G2 plays at their best and Griffon plays at their best, G2 wins; if neither team plays at their best, then Griffon wins. Since it's rare for both teams to play at their best, I'm going to go out on a limb and say Griffon win the match, but G2 still takes first in the group.
In Fnatic versus Clutch, Fnatic win. Sadly. (Like I said...can Clutch beat any team in their group? I don't think they can.)
Damwon smash ahq, obviously.
And Cloud9 also smash Hong Kong Attitude.
We'll have to see.