There have been many conversations surrounding the LCS this year, especially after failing to send any teams to the Knockout Stage at Worlds 2019. Many of them about the practice structure and soloqueue environment. Most notably, pros complain about ping, wintrading, and Diamonds in their games.

While Diamonds in their games probably sounds terrifying to you, it's something that greatly inhibits the top level challengers to gain real information playing a game. When William "Meteos" Hartman out jungles a Diamond jungler, he learns very little about the jungle matchup and how impactful he actually was when it comes to a pro match. 

Along with ~70 ping from LA, "inters," and autofill, pros rarely gain anything valuable from solo queue, often leading them to just play for fun, or not play much soloqueue at all. It would be like studying for a calculus two exam with an algebra two textbook. Sure, it's math, and sure, it's the second level; but no, it's not exactly helpful. 

The LCS Players Association met with Riot officials this off-season to work out a way to increase professional level practice that still allows pros to fulfill contractual obligation and helps Riot promote their game.

They worked out a new rule allowing pros to stream their matches on the Tournament Realm - the same server used for official LCS matches based in LA - allowing pros much higher quality practice. To clarify, no they will not be streaming their official scrims, but rather "in-houses," - practice games made up of 10 pros, each in their correct role (but not all from the same team).

Stream access is important, because many pros have minimum stream requirements in their contracts. This specifically allows for those requirements to be met. Otherwise, pros were faced with the challenge of either streaming soloqueue AND then later practicing on the Tournament Realm, OR just streaming their solo queue and getting extra rest. 

President Darshan "Darshan" Upadhyaya and the Players Association have been working on other off-season improvements with more annoucements coming soon. Be sure to check back for more updates.