TSM and OpTic Gaming fall short at LCS Summer playoffs

This past weekend, the LCS Summer playoffs got started with its quarterfinal matchups, with Team SoloMid facing off against Clutch Gaming and Counter Logic Gaming taking on OpTic Gaming in one of the biggest tournaments in LoL esports.

Matches kicked off on Saturday with TSM and Clutch, the latter taking a solid 3-1 win. They outplayed their popular opposition consistently throughout the series, even looking strong in the map that they lost. TSM, on the other hand, looked completely lost in each of the four games, with poor teamplay and fights rife throughout the entire series. The one game win seemed to be nothing more than a consolation prize from Clutch, but it was also the only game where they didn't allow Sun "Cody Sun" Li-Yu to run riot. Across four games, he managed 24 kills and only died twice, which is really the only thing you need to know to judge how the series went for TSM.

Clutch Gaming are set to face North America's top seed Team Liquid in an attempt to book their spot in Detroit's Little Caesars Arena for the finals, but it's not going to be easy to get a best-of-5 win over Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng and co.

Meanwhile, CLG made it back to the LCS playoffs for the first time in two years and faced off against OpTic Gaming, enjoying their first stint at playoffs since entering the LCS at the beginning of 2018.

In three games, OpTic's rookie status was evident and they showed that they just aren't capable of beating North America's top teams. In their last showing under the OpTic Gaming banner, the five starting players seemed to start off strong but managed to lose against all odds.

The first game really set the tone for the series as a whole, and it seemed to all be going OpTic's way. They collected four dragons, four Barons and an Elder Dragon, but just didn't get the job done, and CLG fought through to win game one. From there on, there was really no way back for OpTic.

CLG won the next two games with relative ease, with hardly any fight from OpTic throughout, and will be facing Cloud9 in the semifinals. It's unlikely we see them beat C9 the way they beat OpTic, but it's certainly not an impossibility.

The semifinal matches take place this upcoming weekend, August 17-18, with teams aiming to get into the final on August 25 in Detroit. The winner books their spot at the League of Legends World Championships which are set to play across Europe, including the grand final in Paris' AccorHotels Arena.