This year's League of Legends LCS Summer, featuring the best teams from the North America region, is underway and a few of the big guns are already off the mark with wins.
Over the course of the next couple of months, the teams will battle it out in a round-robin format before eight progress to the playoffs with three World Championship spots up for grabs.
What: LCS Summer 2022, League of Legends
Where: USA
When: 17th June to 14th August 2022
How to watch: LCS Twitch / Youtube / bet365's Sports Live Streaming
Odds: Saturday match - Evil Geniuses 4/5, 100 Thieves 10/11
The first several matches at this year's LCS Summer have already taken place and so far it has gone largely as expected.
Evil Geniuses, winners of the Spring Split, opened with a straightforward win against Cloud9, who have started the tournament with a team made up largely of substitutes due to Kim "Berserker" Min-cheol and Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen having both been unavailable.
FlyQuest, who made a strong start to the Spring Split earlier this year before petering off, also opened their account with a win against Golden Guardians, whilst 100 Thieves got the better of an inconsistent Team SoloMid side.
Team Liquid, meanwhile, showed they are most definitely a team to monitor with a flawless performance against Immortals, who they defeated in just over 25 minutes, amassing nearly 16,000 more gold than their opponents.
And in the last match of the opening set of fixtures, Counter-Logic Gaming looked comfortable in a win over DIGNITAS.
That performance against Immortals demonstrated what Team Liquid are all about and they could well go the distance in the LCS Summer.
They did not take home the trophy in the Spring, losing the split's penultimate playoff match 3-0 to Evil Geniuses, but they were arguably the most consistent side.
In the regular season in Spring, Liquid won 14 of their 18 matches and they also started 2022 strongly, taking the title at the LCS Lock In, comfortably beating Evil Geniuses in the final on the occasion.
Both Evil Geniuses and 100 Thieves have weaknesses to be exploited and Team Liquid could capitalise to take the title.
Esports - LEC Summer 2022 (League of Legends)
Esports - LCK Summer Split 2022 (League of Legends)
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When assessing the chances of reigning Spring Split champions Evil Geniuses in the summer variation, it is hard to ignore their inconsistencies.
They won as many matches as they lost in the Spring Split, finishing the regular season with a 9-9 record, and had to rely on a superb run through the lower bracket to make the final after being beaten by Team Liquid in round one of the winners' bracket.
That is not the form of champions and few would have marked them out as clear Spring winners after the conclusion of the LCS Lock In.
The Thieves were at least a little more consistent with a 12-6 win-loss record in the Spring regular season and at 10/11, they could be worth a bet to beat the Evil Geniuses on Saturday.
Victor "FBI" Huang and Choi "huhi" Jae-hyun have perhaps underperformed in the bot lane for the Thieves but elsewhere the team is pretty strong and settled.
Cloud9 were the other team in the mix at the top in the Spring Split but their roster absences will set them back both psychologically and in terms of results.
As for the rest of the field, Team SoloMid are one of the most intriguing teams to watch and will be hopeful of improving on a disappointing Spring Split.
They finished ninth out of the ten teams earlier this year, losing 13 of their 18 contests, but it is worth noting they made the Worlds as recently as 2020 and can blow hot and cold.
For the LCS Summer, they have drafted in mid laner Huang "Maple" Yi-Tang and will hope his experience can at least steady the ship.
FlyQuest placed fifth in the LCS Spring, finishing with the same regular-season record as Evil Geniuses, and that alone should give them confidence going into the summer.
They lost the tiebreaker playoff to Evil Geniuses earlier this year but already look like they could again make a fast start in the Summer Split.
Counter Logic Gaming may have opened the LCS Summer with a win but it could take a lot for them to drastically improve on their eighth-placed finish while Dignitas and Immortals may also end up simply making up the numbers.
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