On August 23rd, 2019 LCK Summer Playoffs Round 1 Match saw SKT T1 dominating Sandbox Gaming in their 3:0 victory. SKT will face off against Damwon Gaming on August 25th to decide which of the two will be heading to the Finals. 

Kim ‘Clid’ Tae-min was exceptional on the Elise as he showed his ganking prowess. Clid’s timely ganks were instrumental in securing the win for his team. SKT’s Clid and Head Coach Kim ‘kkOma’ Jung-gyun spoke during the press conference after securing their spot in the Semifinals.

Talk to us about the win.

kkOma: We won today, but personally, I wasn’t really satisfied with how our team played. In order to beat Damwon, we will need to improve on multiple areas. We will need to do that if we want to have success against them.

Clid: We built up a good momentum, but with no doubt, there are areas that we could improve on. Damwon is a very strong team, so we have a lot of practice to do.


We thought SKT played better than they did in the Wild Cards, but you seem rather critical of today’s performance.

kkOma: I watched today’s games as if our opponent was Damwon. The critical mistakes we made today would’ve been heavily punished if that was against Damwon, who would’ve snowballed off of those mistakes. We won 3:0, and I may seem too critical despite the result. There is no doubt that our performance improved over that from the Afreeca series.


Clid, are you happy with today’s performance? What would you like to improve on?

Clid: I had positioning mistakes in the early game, and my objective control could have been better.


You will go up against Canyon, the current season MVP. How do you feel?

Clid: All the junglers in the LCK are very talented. Canyon will likely prioritize champions that will show off his mechanics. He’s a great player. I have a lot of preparations to do.


When were you certain of today’s victory?

kkOma: The moment you’re certain is when you end up losing. That’s a mindset that neither myself nor our players should be having. We didn’t think about the victory until the last nexus was destroyed. We constantly think of the things we can do better and the things we can do to get the win. We do that until we get our victory.


You showed a lot of new champions today. The patch only happened very recently, so it must have been difficult to prepare. How did you manage to get prepared?

kkOma: The coaches work very hard in experimenting different champions. We demand our players to always maintain a large champion pool, and our players are very good at that. We will always have different champions to play. This is the same for laners as it is for our jungler. Clid is a very talented player, so we can throw anything at him, knowing he will execute.


Clid, do you have a special champion in mind?

Clid: I haven’t thought too deeply on a certain champion. We’ll have to decide situationally.


We noticed that Khan started calling Faker ‘Captain’ instead of his name. What happened?

kkOma: They’re just having fun. He never does that normally.


Last thoughts heading into the next round.

kkOma: Our players are running a difficult race, but we want to beat Damwon to get to the Finals. We are putting so much energy into this, and if we are to lose in any way, it would really hurt us emotionally. Having made it this far, we’ll work to keep our players in the best possible condition to play a series that we won’t regret.

Thank you to our fans for their unending support. We’ll play better than we did today to get our victory against Damwon. I also want to mention our substitute players. All of our players work hard in contributing to the team. I want to give a special shoutout to Mata, who has been incredibly helpful.

Clid: Damwon is a good team, so we must give it everything that we have. I want to thank our fans for always showing their support, and I’d like to give a special thanks to our coaching staff, the head department, and the rest of our staff members.