JD Gaming vs T1 Prediction: Chinese confront Korean hegemony

The League of Legends eSports World Championship Semifinals will continue on Saturday, October 29-30. JD Gaming and T1 will battle it out in the first semifinal match.

World Championship 2022 is the year's main tournament in the cybersports discipline League of Legends. The 2022 edition of the premier international LAN tournament takes place in the US and Mexico and features 24 teams from around the world. The tournament will run from September 29 to November 05, 2022, with a prize pool of $2,225,000.

The LPL champions remain the last Chinese representatives at this Worlds. This season, the squads from LCK proved their dominance over their Chinese opponents by reaching the semifinal round by a ratio of 3 to 1. In the quarterfinals, JD Gaming had the easiest opponent as there was only one European team to beat in this Sino-Korean squad. The Chinese champion easily defeated Rogue 3-0.

China's strongest team made it through the group stage at the end of the summer split. The only time JD Gaming lost to Korean giants DAMWON Gaming was a loss, and they had to play a rematch for the first place, where the LPL champion took revenge.

But this squad began to show such a game only this year. The JD Gaming team in 2021 failed in every tournament they participated in. After a good year in 2020, the following year, the organization can boast only the LPL Spring Split, and that was 5-6th place, but the Summer Championship was the worst ever - 12th place and past even the playoff stage and of course the World Championship was out of the question.

Before the start of the LPL Spring Split 2022, the team played in the Demacia Cup 2021 pre-season tournament and losing 4 out of 4 games to drop out without even making the playoffs. But the team succeeded in the spring split, finishing in 4th place in the standings. That's a pretty tough result if you look back on 2021.

The main transfer from the Spring squad was the move of Hope from EDward Gaming, the trainee of the World Champions. He also stayed in the team for the Summer Split. After a year's break, Korean coach Homme, who led JD Gaming to Chinese championship medals in 2020 and a good result (5-6) at the 2020 World Cup, returned to the organization. Otherwise, new young blood came into the team, renewing almost the entirety of last year's squad, including JD Gaming saying goodbye to the captain as well. This squad needed time for chemistry, which they got and are already showing results.

T1 took down tough opposition RNG 3-0 in the quarterfinals, showing they were at their best and ready to advance to the Korean Grand Final, eliminating the last Chinese representative in the World Cup on the way.

In the group stage of the World Championship 2022, the T1 squad had no problems either. In the same group as T1 were: reigning world champions EDward Gaming, Europeans from Fnatic, and Americans from Cloud9. Team T1 easily won the group, losing only once in six games, and unexpectedly to Fnatic. Remarkably, the Chinese EDward Gaming players could not oppose T1 players at all.

T1 is a Korean eSports team run by T1 Entertainment & Sports, a joint venture between SK Telecom and Comcast Spectacor, formed from SK Telecom T1 K and SK Telecom T1 S. They were previously known as SK Telecom T1.

To develop a young squad before the 2021 season, T1 managed to sign Keriya from DRX, replacing Eforth. This squad finished 4th in the Korean Championship in the spring of 2021, with T1 being heavily criticized for many player replacements during the regular season. In the summer of 2021, coaches Daeny and Zefa were fired from the team, right in the middle of the split, with Stardust and Moment becoming interim coaches. This squad finished second in the summer split, losing to DAMWON Gaming in the final, but Team T1 managed to secure a trip to Worlds 2021 by beating Hanwha Life Esports 3-2 in the regional final. The Korean squad reached the semifinals at the 2021 Worlds, which is a good result for them, but at this Worlds the squad are keen to surpass their result from last year.

I don't want to believe in the Korean final, so I believe in JD Gaming's success in this clash, so I suggest betting on the Chinese win at odds of 1.95.

Games at such stages are most often played on maximum maps, so you can take a risk and bet on Total Over 4.5 maps at odds of 2.62.

The Total frags for the whole match will be Over 101.5 for 1.83.

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