PCS has dominated the Play-In Stage of Worlds 2023 thus far.
CTBC Flying Oyster have had the perfect start to Worlds 2023 after they defeated DetonatioN FocusMe 2-0 in Group B's opening series. That win puts CFO into the winner's series where they will await the victor of the next series between Team Whales and the Worlds Qualifying Series winner, Team BDS.
That loss means that DFM will now drop to the elimination series against the loser of the BDS vs Whales match-up. DFM have only ever made it out of the Play-In Stage once back in 2021 and it's looking to be a steep climb for the 14-time LJL champions.
As for the PCS second seed, they were flying high in both games against DFM. However, both teams would start game one in a more passive manner with neither of them able to get a firm grasp on the game. The gold lead in the first 15 minutes barely shifted between CFO and DFM. But from there, it was CFO who first started to pull away after some great teamfights, which also included a quardra from Tseng "JimieN" Hao-chun.
While DFM did manage to shift the gold deficiency back to less than a thousand by the 25th minute, it wasn't enough to hold back CFO who were arguably much more coordinated in their teamfights. Lee "Aria" Ga-eul did as much as he could with Ahri in the middle lane with multiple kills and was by far DFM's best player in the first match.
And with CFO needing just one more win, they went all out in the second match that also had Jayce and Rumble once more for JimieN and Hsu "Rest" Shih-chieh. Unlike the first game, CFO had much more control over this game as they were able to keep DFM at arm's length for the majority of the match. CFO was also clinical in their skirmishes against DFM, keeping the LJL champs to just four kills.
This time, it was Chao "Shunn" Ying-shun on Kai'Sa and Chu Xuan "Gemini" Huang on Maokai that stood out in game two. Shunn secured eight kills and eight assists to go with a sole death while Gemini was everywhere on the map with 15 assists to his name to go with one kill and one death. Liu "ShiauC" Chia-hao also had a great performance on Blitzcrank with the second highest kills for CFO with four.
CFO are now just one more best-of-three series away from securing a spot in the second round of the Play-In Stage. As for DFM, they will still have one more shot to keep their tournament hopes alive in the elimination series, which will take place in a few days.
