Korean Tournaments Explained
Riot·6/20/2014, 10:43:33 PM·0 votes·8,064 views
Each professional League of Legends region has its own idiosyncrasies, and you wouldn’t be blamed for being a bit lost when it comes to how Korea sets up their leagues.
Korea has three tournaments, all of which just happen to have recently held their finals matches: SK Telecom LTE-A LoL Masters, OGN Champions Spring & NLB Spring 2014. All three of these tournaments had different formats, and different core concepts. So how do they differ? We’re here to lay it out for you.
The first building block to understand Korea and its various tournaments is the difference between a team and an organization. In Korea, organizations are regulated through the Korea E-sports Association (KeSPA). Whereas organizations in Europe and the United States are explicitly forbidden from having more than one team in either LCS by Riot Games, KeSPA allows organizations to sponsor sister teams. Take the CJ Entus organization, for example, who fields two teams in Frost and Blaze.
The SK Telecom LTE-A LoL Masters tournament is designed for organizations that have a pair of teams to compete against each other for prize money - not to mention an automatic qualification in the 2014 Korean Regional Tournament for both of the winning organization’s teams. The Korea Regional Tournament is the primary means teams have of reaching the 2014 World Championship.
Since it was organizations, rather than teams, competing, the structure of the tournament was radically different from OGN Champions and NLB. Two organizations battled it out in a three game series, with each organization fielding both of their teams for the first two games. The third game was the “Masters match,” in which players from either team could be mixed and matched to create new squads compete at the organization’s discretion. A clean sweep, or a 2-1 win, accrued points that went towards playoff seeding, while a loss gave negative points. The first two playoff rounds were variations of this match theme, while the finals were a best-of-five in which each team was scheduled to play two games each before a deciding Masters match.
This time around, the tournament was won by the Samsung Galaxy organization. Their two teams, Samsung Galaxy White & Samsung Galaxy Blue, are both automatically qualified for the 2014 Korean Regional Tournament.
The second building block to understand Korea and its various tournaments is what a Circuit Point is. Circuit Points are what Korea uses to determine which teams compete - other than those already qualified by way of Masters - in the 2014 Korean Regional Tournament. As we outlined here, SK Telecom T1 K and Samsung Galaxy Blue both sit tied atop the Circuit Point table with 450 each.
The top four teams from OGN Champions and the top twelve teams from NLB earn Circuit Points which count toward their season total. There are three tournament periods - Winter, Spring, and Summer - in which teams can gain Circuit Points
The format here is a bit different than Western audiences are used to. OGN Champions splits sixteen teams into four group of four, and each team plays a pair of games against the other three in their group. A 2-0 sweep is worth three points to the victor, and a 1-1 tie is worth one point to each team. The top two point earners from each group advance to a bracket stage in where all match are best-of-five. The other two teams fall into NLB Platinum League.
Once the bracket stage has begun, OGN Champions turns into a standard tournament. The winners continue to advance while the losers of the first round drop into NLB Diamond League, and the losers of the second round drop into a 3rd/4th place match.
Samsung Galaxy Blue won the most recent Champions tournament, HOT6iX Champions Spring 2014, by defeating NaJin White Shield 3-1 in the finals.
So what happens to those who don’t make it to the bracket stage of OGN Champions? Well, they fall into the NLB Diamond League, a losers’ bracket of sorts.
The NLB tournament itself is an iterative tournament that gives teams that failed to make it into the top four of an OGN Champions tournament a chance to earn Circuit Points. It is broken into three separate leagues: Gold, Platinum and Diamond. Much like ranked solo queue, a team has to make it through Gold to get into the Platinum League, and through Platinum to get to Diamond League. Every series is a best-of-three except for the semifinals and finals in Diamond League, which are best-of-five.
Gold League is populated by sixteen teams that did not qualify for the current OGN Champions tournament at all. Those teams are separated into four groups of four, and have to win a pair of series to advance into Platinum League League.
The four teams advancing through meet up with teams that failed to get out of the OGN Champions group stage. At this point, there are twelve teams looking to fill four spots open in the Diamond league. The teams are separated into four separate brackets of three teams, and the winner of that bracket advances into the NLB Diamond League. Yes, it’s complicated.
The Diamond League is a single eight team bracket where the four teams that won in Platinum League are joined by the four teams that lost in the OGN Champions quarterfinals. This final part of the tournament is single elimination which whittles the field down to a final two. The team that wins that series wins the entire tournament.
CJ Entus Frost won NLB Spring 2014 by beating NaJin Black Sword in the finals. Frost smashed favorite SK Telecom T1 K along the way to their title.
The three Korean tournaments appear very intimidating at first since they’re distinctly different from each other, but a little bit of study clears everything up. In fact, the various formats give fans a very broad look at their favorite teams given the varying circumstances that they compete in throughout a given tournament season!
SK Telecom LTE-A LoL Masters
The first building block to understand Korea and its various tournaments is the difference between a team and an organization. In Korea, organizations are regulated through the Korea E-sports Association (KeSPA). Whereas organizations in Europe and the United States are explicitly forbidden from having more than one team in either LCS by Riot Games, KeSPA allows organizations to sponsor sister teams. Take the CJ Entus organization, for example, who fields two teams in Frost and Blaze.
The SK Telecom LTE-A LoL Masters tournament is designed for organizations that have a pair of teams to compete against each other for prize money - not to mention an automatic qualification in the 2014 Korean Regional Tournament for both of the winning organization’s teams. The Korea Regional Tournament is the primary means teams have of reaching the 2014 World Championship.
Since it was organizations, rather than teams, competing, the structure of the tournament was radically different from OGN Champions and NLB. Two organizations battled it out in a three game series, with each organization fielding both of their teams for the first two games. The third game was the “Masters match,” in which players from either team could be mixed and matched to create new squads compete at the organization’s discretion. A clean sweep, or a 2-1 win, accrued points that went towards playoff seeding, while a loss gave negative points. The first two playoff rounds were variations of this match theme, while the finals were a best-of-five in which each team was scheduled to play two games each before a deciding Masters match.
This time around, the tournament was won by the Samsung Galaxy organization. Their two teams, Samsung Galaxy White & Samsung Galaxy Blue, are both automatically qualified for the 2014 Korean Regional Tournament.
OGN Champions & NLB
The second building block to understand Korea and its various tournaments is what a Circuit Point is. Circuit Points are what Korea uses to determine which teams compete - other than those already qualified by way of Masters - in the 2014 Korean Regional Tournament. As we outlined here, SK Telecom T1 K and Samsung Galaxy Blue both sit tied atop the Circuit Point table with 450 each.
The top four teams from OGN Champions and the top twelve teams from NLB earn Circuit Points which count toward their season total. There are three tournament periods - Winter, Spring, and Summer - in which teams can gain Circuit Points
The format here is a bit different than Western audiences are used to. OGN Champions splits sixteen teams into four group of four, and each team plays a pair of games against the other three in their group. A 2-0 sweep is worth three points to the victor, and a 1-1 tie is worth one point to each team. The top two point earners from each group advance to a bracket stage in where all match are best-of-five. The other two teams fall into NLB Platinum League.
Once the bracket stage has begun, OGN Champions turns into a standard tournament. The winners continue to advance while the losers of the first round drop into NLB Diamond League, and the losers of the second round drop into a 3rd/4th place match.
Samsung Galaxy Blue won the most recent Champions tournament, HOT6iX Champions Spring 2014, by defeating NaJin White Shield 3-1 in the finals.
So what happens to those who don’t make it to the bracket stage of OGN Champions? Well, they fall into the NLB Diamond League, a losers’ bracket of sorts.
The NLB tournament itself is an iterative tournament that gives teams that failed to make it into the top four of an OGN Champions tournament a chance to earn Circuit Points. It is broken into three separate leagues: Gold, Platinum and Diamond. Much like ranked solo queue, a team has to make it through Gold to get into the Platinum League, and through Platinum to get to Diamond League. Every series is a best-of-three except for the semifinals and finals in Diamond League, which are best-of-five.
Gold League is populated by sixteen teams that did not qualify for the current OGN Champions tournament at all. Those teams are separated into four groups of four, and have to win a pair of series to advance into Platinum League League.
The four teams advancing through meet up with teams that failed to get out of the OGN Champions group stage. At this point, there are twelve teams looking to fill four spots open in the Diamond league. The teams are separated into four separate brackets of three teams, and the winner of that bracket advances into the NLB Diamond League. Yes, it’s complicated.
The Diamond League is a single eight team bracket where the four teams that won in Platinum League are joined by the four teams that lost in the OGN Champions quarterfinals. This final part of the tournament is single elimination which whittles the field down to a final two. The team that wins that series wins the entire tournament.
CJ Entus Frost won NLB Spring 2014 by beating NaJin Black Sword in the finals. Frost smashed favorite SK Telecom T1 K along the way to their title.
The three Korean tournaments appear very intimidating at first since they’re distinctly different from each other, but a little bit of study clears everything up. In fact, the various formats give fans a very broad look at their favorite teams given the varying circumstances that they compete in throughout a given tournament season!
the knowledge deficit i had about Korean region.. here's a 