Kespa Cup is the annual tournament in Korea, where both amateur and professional teams participate during the off-season between Worlds and the next LCK Split.
The tournament started with 20 teams, but only one will take the glory and call themselves Kespa Champion.
Afreeca 3-0 DRX and move on to the finals where they'll collide against Sandbox. DRX couldnt ever really achieve much today and a lot of times put too much resposibility on themselves from the drafts. Game1 was their best hope but they got outplayed.
— LS (@LSXYZ9) January 4, 2020
The competition was not supposed to have an English stream, but T1 alongside GenG chipped in with their support, and an English stream was set up with the casters from LCK.
The Kespa Cup gives a brief look at the new roster of the upcoming LCK season and they synergy built between the players. The second semifinal was between AFS and DragonX. Both teams underwent some roster changes.
AFS acquired a new mid lane and bottom lane in SSUN, Mystic, and Jelly. DragonX changed most of the roster, outside the ADC. They have acquired the Griffin solo laners in Doran and Chovy and promoted trainee Pyosik and Keria to the main roster.
While DragonX were considered the favorites of the tournament, they got stomped entirely by Afreeca Freecs. Mystic, the returning ADC from LPL, outclassed Deft in all three matches and demolished the DragonX squad. His game plan was supported by the monster in the top lane Kiin, who has been playing exceptionally well in the past few years in LCK but had no teammates to help him.
Player of the series: Kiin – 2 nominations, Fly – 1 nomination. Kiin was the most valuable player of the series, carrying hard in 1st and 3rd game and showing spectacular performance in the second game as well. While his Kennen shutdown the opposite Vlad player, Fly in the mid lane with his surprise Ornn pick was the pivotal point of the game, throwing out great ults and catching DragonX in choke points.
With the new roster, Afreeca Freecs is looking to be a top tier team in the LCK. For now, no one is sure how this will translate to the LCK Split, which will be opening in a couple of weeks, but the Kespa Cup is an excellent training ground for LCK teams in the offseason, to see their limits.
Tomorrow the final between Afreeca Freecs and Sandbox Gaming will happen, a surprise to all the LCK fans, who expected one of T1, GenG, DragonX, or Damwon Gaming to be in the finals. The four teams mentioned were utterly outclassed by both Afreeca Freecs and Sandbox Gaming, perhaps this is a new era for LCK where the veterans pass the stick to the young, fresh talent willing to sacrifice more to achieve victory!
