Cloud9 vs Evil Geniuses

Next up, we have a clash between Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses. On paper, this is quite an exciting scrap, although in reality, it's probably going to be fairly one-sided. Cloud9 is still the best and most dominant team in North America, and Evil Geniuses aren't even starting with their best and most capable line-up.

You do the math.

The boys in black and blue are better in every way, shape, and form, and they've been so good over the last seven months that it's downright impossible to bet against them. It feels like they can play any team comp, go for any strategy, and still find a way to win. Watching them in action has been an absolute treat and they haven't even peaked, either. That said, they have slowed down a bit once Summer Split began. No one's quite sure whether that's because they wanted to take a breather after a hectic Spring Split, or because their opposition became better over the course of the calendar year. Still, even in their current, somewhat slower form, they shouldn't have any trouble in taking Evil Geniuses down.

EG's roster swap didn't pan out as expected against Team Liquid yesterday as they were quickly overwhelmed by the former LCS champions. There was simply nothing good happening on EG's side and putting a player like Huni on Karma (of all champions) shows us that their drafting is as bad and illogical as ever. They made a couple of egregious mistakes early on and Liquid capitalized fully en route to a dominant, one-sided shellacking. There's no reason to think that EG will fare any better against Cloud9, so we're obviously siding with the defending champions on this one.