Due to an unfortunate issue with travel between Vietnam and China, the VCS teams were unable to attend the 2020 World Championship, requiring a last-minute format change for the Play-In Stage. The usual four-group format was changed to two groups of five teams, featuring a single round-robin group stage followed by a mini-bracket of best of five series to determine the qualifiers to the main Group Stage event.

After the first day of games, the community started sizing up the groups and standings, noting who had already faced off and what key matches were still left. Within that conversation came predictions for final seedings that were based on potential win-loss records, but included a head to head advantage. 

For instance, Team Liquid beat MAD Lions in their opening game, which lead many to believe that Liquid could easily lock in first place if even if they dropped one game, since even if they tied 3-1 with MAD Lions, they'd have the head to head over them. Of course, the real threat is no longer MAD Lions, but rather SuperMassive, but regardless, a tie in win-loss record will result in a necessary tiebreaker, as announced by Medic at the start of Day 2. 

A single round-robin format is already extremely unforgiving, and on top of allowing even the fourth-place team a chance at a best of five series, Riot is keeping the head to head record advantage to a minimum. This gives teams a better chance to shrug off a loss allowing for a rematch and a better shot at claiming a spot in the main event Group Stage. Rather than an all out victory, the team who won in their first match will get side selection for their reward. Check out the rest of the Worlds action on lolesports.com/watch.  

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